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Ingrid Law talks about the inspiration for Savvy
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S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
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In a letter to his readers, John Hart talks about becoming a writer and the challenges he faced in writing The Last Child.
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A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
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   Summary and Book Reviews

Theft: Summary and book reviews of Theft by Peter Carey, plus links to an excerpt from Theft and a biography of Peter Carey.

Theft Theft
A Love Story
by Peter Carey
Hardcover: May 2006,
272 pages.
Paperback: May 2007,
288 pages.

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Critics' Opinion:   very good
Readers' Rating:  Five Stars
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Book Summary

From the two-time Booker Prize–winning author and recipient of the Commonwealth Prize comes this new novel about obsession, deception, and redemption, at once an engrossing psychological suspense story and a work of highly charged, fiendishly funny literary fiction.

Michael—a.k.a. "Butcher"—Boone is an ex–"really famous" painter: opinionated, furious, brilliant, and now reduced to living in the remote country house of his biggest collector and acting as caretaker for his younger brother, Hugh, a damaged man of imposing physicality and childlike emotional volatility. Alone together they’ve forged a delicate and shifting equilibrium, a balance instantly destroyed when a mysterious young woman named Marlene walks out of a rainstorm and into their lives on three-inch Manolo Blahnik heels. Beautiful, smart, and ambitious, she’s also the daughter-in-law of the late great painter Jacques Liebovitz, one of Butcher’s earliest influences. She’s sweet to Hugh and falls in love with Butcher, and they reciprocate in kind. And she sets in motion a chain of events that could be the making—or the ruin—of them all.

Told through the alternating points of view of the brothers—Butcher’s urbane, intelligent, caustic observations contrasting with Hugh’s bizarre, frequently poetic, utterly unique voice—Theft reminds us once again of Peter Carey’s remarkable gift for creating indelible, fascinating characters and a narrative as gripping as it is deliriously surprising.

Book Reviews

Very Good BookBrowse
Despite having lived in New York for 15 years, Carey once again sets his latest book, at least in part, in Australia, but we're also taken on a wild ride through Japan and New York in a novel that has received exceptional reviews from all prepublication review sources (including three starred reviews), and has been variously described as "a masterpiece", "a certifiable hoot", "edgy, irreverent, often hilariously profane", "sharply observed, well written, and acerbically witty".
Full Review Members Only (members only, 383 words).


Very Good  Library Journal
Sharply observed, well written, and acerbically witty, this book will only further Carey's reputation.

Very Good  Publishers Weekly
Starred review. A magnificent high-stakes art heist wrapped around a fraternal saga.

Very Good  Booklist - Donna Seaman
Starred review. Carey is at his satirical best ... and at his most tender.

Very Good  Kirkus Reviews
It's a certifiable hoot. Is the endlessly inventive Carey on the Nobel shortlist? He ought to be.

Very Good  Washington Post
Carey frames a story that shifts before our eyes -- maddeningly complex, hypnotically brilliant, entirely original.

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