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A Novel We Love
A Review by Anna Godbersen

Michael "Butcher" Boone, one of the two voices that make up Peter Carey's insanely readable Theft, is an Artist with a capital A, an egotist and genius ranting of his own work: "This stuff can't be talked, or walked, or garnered from the auction record. These are my mother's bones, my father's dick, the boiled-down carcass of Butcher Bones." Unfortunately for the Butcher, the art market is a fickle thing, and when we first meet him he is ruined by drink, divorce, alimony and the misfortune of having gone out of fashion. He is also the caretaker of his story's other narrator, Hugh, his fat, pungent, not-quite-right-in-the-head brother. The brothers Boone (or Bones, as they also call themselves) are exiled to the country house of the venal collector Jean-Paul, and that might have been an end to it save for the arrival of one Marlene Leibovitz. The daughter-in-law of an early 20th Century master, an art world ingénue turned art world fixer, she draws the brothers back into the world, with kindness and sex, and also into a game of high stakes international trickery.

Carey, the author of Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang, writes convincingly of painters and painting, with careful attention to color, brushstroke, process. But more importantly, he gives distinct voices to two maniacs, whose violent and passionate parallel trajectories suggest those weighty themes of obsession, loyalty and authenticity. Theft showcases animated, hilarious, jewel-encrusted prose, and it is motored by some good old-fashioned storytelling.

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