Thieving Sun: A Novel

Summary

In Thieving Sun, Julienne, a student of sculpture, and Gaspar, a young composer, fall in love at a small college and share a home for more than a decade before encountering the fundamental rift that will change their lives.

Through a series of microtonal music scales, the story is told in nonlinear scenes that unfold over the whole of Julienne’s life. In moments that are sometimes entirely funny and sometimes terribly sad, Julienne supports herself first as executive assistant to an exacting German banker then as a cleaner, makes sculpture, and gains not only an ever-evolving understanding of Gaspar in the aftermath of his death, a kind of self-actualization. The reverberations of grief force Julienne to confront her painful past, including the mystery of her own birth and the fantastical story ascribed to it by her flight attendant mother. Slowly, and with the cascade of time set to music, Julienne can envision, for the first time, a real future.

Thieving Sun is a small masterpiece; a profound and contemporary meditation on art, grief, debt, suicide loss, and the danger of being alive.