Publisher: Knopf
Authors: Peter Carey
List Price: $24.00
Amazon Price: $15.60
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Reviews:
Summary: A singular work
Love or hate his novels, Peter Carey remains a writer like no other. Theft: A love story offers the reader a fascinating, nuanced, and often darkly humorous view of the relationships of three thoroughly damaged individuals, an Australian formerly successful artist, his "idiot savant" brother, and the beautiful and mysterious art expert who stumbles into their lives. Telling the tale from the two brothers' shifting perspective, Carey shows offers the reader an intimate view, while also providing an insightful commentary on the concepts of observation, blindness, attachment, and art.
This being a Peter Carey novel, the author's characters hold strong opinions and the author's thorough research of his subject shines through the pages. Yet Carey also stands as a subtle author, interested in topics of relationship, loyalty, family, and time. What makes this work particularly interesting is that while Carey's topic involves the seemingly high stakes world of multi-million dollar art, he makes clear that the real stakes are for the character's hearts and in the end their souls.
Those looking for a page turner may leave disappointed, but careful readers will surely relish Mr. Carey's singular style and wonderfully drawn characters, all complex and all deeply flawed. Whatever wrong they may commit, each in turn takes a hold of the reader's heart, making this a most satisfying read indeed.
Summary: An excellent read
Peter Carey is a truly original writer with a wonderful capacity to bring a new and unique perspective to his story telling (Ned Kelly, Oscar and Lucinda etc). He seems to use his subject matter to explore his Australian background and the place of the country in the world, but in a manner that should not alienate readers from other parts of the world. It has been noted that Theft includes a thinly veiled reference to his marital woes. It was refreshing to hear the idiomatic speech of the characters.
I personally preferred The Kelly Gang, but this is an excellent book that is well researched and written. My only quibble is that they are more likely to play rugby (First XIII (League) or XV (Union)) than Australian Rules Football (First XVIII) in Bellingen.
Summary: Robust, hilarious and dark; a true view of the human heart
In robust, antic prose which embodies the characters of his two narrators, Australian author Carey (winner of the Booker Prize for "Oscar and Lucinda" and "True History of the Kelly Gang") recounts a tale of two brothers, a girl and a valuable painting.
The brothers are Michael "Butcher" Boone (nicknamed for his father's family business), a once famous and fashionable painter now down on his luck, and his big, brain-damaged brother Hugh, a man subject to passions even less comprehensible than Butcher's. Since the death of their parents, Butcher is Hugh's caretaker.
"Sometimes he was so bloody smart, so coherent, at other times a wailing gibbering fool. Sometimes he adored me, loudly, passionately, like a whiskery bad-breathed child. But the next day or the next minute I would be the Leader of the Opposition and he would lay in wait amongst the wild lantana, pounce, wrestle me violently into the mud, or the river, or across the engorged, wet-season zucchini."
Butcher and Hugh are in exile at a country estate lent by the painter's biggest collector. Butcher has just been released from prison after a bad divorce (he tried to rescue his paintings from the state of "marital assets") and reversal of fortune. This is his chance to regain his strength and paint, unencumbered by the distractions of the world - other than Hugh. And paint he does in manic scenes reminiscent of Irish writer Joyce Cary's Gulley Jimson at work on his masterpiece at another rich man's unwitting expense.
But the world's distractions come to him in the person of Marlene, a slender young woman stranded in her Manolo Blahniks by a torrential storm. She quickly charms Hugh: "And there she was - a type - one of those rare, often unlucky people who `get on with Hugh.'" Butcher is equally charmed, or at least intrigued, especially when it turns out Marlene is the daughter-in-law of Jacques Leibovitz, the painter who inspired Butcher's own career. Turns out Butcher's neighbor owns a particularly valuable Leibovitz and Marlene has come to authenticate it. Or something.
Three weeks later the "art police" show up at Butcher's studio, accusing him of having stolen the famous painting from his neighbor. Outraged when the police confiscate his new work to x-ray it in their search for the missing painting, he abandons his new studio and country retreat, returning to civilization to pursue his paintings, his career and eventually Marlene, with reckless abandon.
The novel accelerates from Australia to Japan to New York as Carey breathes new life into the old saw "blind ambition." Butcher tricks Hugh into a home so he can have a show in Japan and ride his wave of success on to New York. But he can't quite abandon his brother and Hugh finds himself in New York where he impulsively rescues himself from Butcher's increasingly chaotic life, taking up with Marlene's now former husband, Olivier, the gentle son of Jacques Leibovitz.
Hugh, however, has his own brand of guileless shrewdness. Olivier is tormented by love for the treacherous Marlene, who uses him shamelessly.
"When he began to cry at breakfast I knew I had chosen the losing side, forgive me, bless me, I wish I was a nicer man. I tried to return to Butcher but he would not answer the bell."
The reader's sympathies will lie more with Hugh than his tormented, mostly well-meaning, but fairly venal brother. Hugh is the foil, the innocent voice of reason who often gets things wrong. He's also extremely difficult and one can hardly blame his brother for wriggling out from under from time to time.
Hilarity and darkness coexist on every volatile page as Carey beautifully delineates their complex story of brotherly love while producing a wild caper and a slick send-up of the high-end art world. A terrific novel - one of his best.
--Portsmouth Herald
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