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.
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". (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Library Journal
Sharply observed, well written, and acerbically witty, this book will only further Carey's reputation.
Publishers Weekly
Starred review. A magnificent high-stakes art heist wrapped around a fraternal saga.
Booklist - Donna Seaman
Starred review. Carey is at his satirical best ... and at his most tender.
Kirkus Reviews
It's a certifiable hoot. Is the endlessly inventive Carey on the Nobel shortlist? He ought to be.
Washington Post
Carey frames a story that shifts before our eyes -- maddeningly complex, hypnotically brilliant, entirely original.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Travis Ann Sherman Book of the Decade Theft is everything I yearn for in a book. It is beautifully, lyrically written in first person and more amazingly for serious fiction, not serious -- not even a little depressing. Open the covers and you fall immediately into the bizarre modern... Read More
Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943 (in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, about 30
miles from Melbourne). He attended Geelong Grammar School (one of
Australia's top private schools which at one time or another has been
responsible for educating many of the most powerful names in Australian business
and government). He left university
after a year having failed his science exams and found work as a copyrighter in
London (UK) and Melbourne - and eventually started his own agency. He published his first volume of short stories, War Crimes,
in 1979, followed by another volume of short stories, The Fat Man in History,
in 1980.
He then wrote three novels, Bliss (1981) - about an advertising executive
who has an out-of-body experience; Illywhacker (1985) - Australian history
told through the memoirs of a 100-year old confidence man or "illywhacker"; and
Oscar and Lucinda (1988).
In about 1991 he moved to New York with his wife and son, to teach creative
writing at the University of New York (where he still...
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Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
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