Theft: a love story by Peter Carey

Theft: a love story by Peter Carey, Knopf, 2006.

Rating: 9.5/10

Will 'Butcher Bones' reclaim his fame as a first class Australian painter, or will his demented brother or his shady new girlfriend get him into trouble and a fast track back to the clink?

Summary:
Michael Boone is an artist and an ex-crim. He finds himself secreted away by his patron, Jean-Paul Milan, to a fancy house in outback Australia to paint. His mentally challenged brother, Hugh, accompanies him. One day Marlene, the wife of the son of a now dead but highly sought after painter, turns up. Soon after one of the famous painter's works is stolen from Boone's neighbour. Various crazy twists and turns occur and everyone ends up pursued by the Australian police in New York. Seedy secrets from the under-belly of the global art world start popping up just to complicate things further.

Good Points:
Brilliantly written - I don't know why I haven't read anything by Carey before, since he is so famous, but this book makes me want to go out and read everything he's ever written. As an internationally successful writer it is good to see he still writes with an Australian voice (in fact non-Australians might struggle with some of the ockerisms). The structure takes a little getting used to (it switches from 'Butcher Bones' -Michael the painter - to 'Slow Bones' - his demented brother, Hugh). The style swerves from silly and grotesque to serious and cynical, and some passages made me snigger in glee. It also takes the piss out of the art world and how paintings have become corprate investments rather than spiritual or psychological explorations of their makers.

The Bad Points:
It has a lot of art jargon and references to art and artists, but I'm assuming Carey has done his research and it is accurate. Also, although the ending is satisfying, at least two loose ends were left dangling that I would have appreciated 'tied-up'. Yes, I know this would be intentional, after all, this is 'literature' rather than a neat little pot-boiler. But still, I liked the character of the police officer so much I would have appreciated a little more of him in the end.

I loved it.