Portrait of a Thief Book Review
From Goodreads: History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now.
Will Chen plans to steal them back.
A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son who has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a mysterious Chinese benefactor reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.
His crew is every heist archetype one can imagine—or at least, the closest he can get. A con artist: Irene Chen, a public policy major at Duke who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering major who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.
Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.
I’ve had this beautiful edition of Portrait of a Thief from Illumicrate for a little while now. It sounded super intriguing, especially with the sort of “Oceans 11” comparison, and I do love me some books about art. Initially, I was really drawn into the story, especially as it seemed very character driven and crammed with beautiful prose. The characters are very interesting. I loved Will, and his determination to organise and go through the thefts, and I liked how Daniel’s story added a lot of tension to the story, with his father being an art crimes investigator with the police.
The prose was definitely my favourite thing about the book. It reminded me a lot of books like The Raven Boys and Laini Taylor’s writing, that kind of poetic, quite witty and whimsical way of phrasing things. If you’re a fan of this style of writing, I’d recommend trying this book, especially if you’re also a fan of character-driven books.
The themes and messages of the narrative were also very interesting– and it definitely explores ideas of art theft and colonialism, as well as how difficult it can be growing up as Chinese-Americans. I think it handled the idea of identity a little bit better than some of the other themes.
Unfortunately, there were also a lot of things I wasn’t convinced by. The art theft stuff was fascinating to start with, but the story glosses over the logistics of this, and essentially it’s just a smash and grab thing that lacks a lot of nuance and ingenuity and skips over anything that might essentially make the reader question the realistic chances of a bunch of young adults stealing art from museums. At one point, one of the characters, who is carrying the stolen piece, actually gets her luggage searched at an airport and it’s explained away so easily. Similarly, several of the characters go on tours of the museums to get information a day or two prior to acting, and yet none of the police actually link this to the thefts, even though they rob multiple museums and steal similar items? It felt a bit lacklustre and not very realistic. And while I enjoyed the ideas about colonialism and art theft, the book really lacked some of the meat of this kind of discussion, mainly because it glosses over these things, the end is neatly tied up quite suddenly, and the art isn’t really discussed in a way that I’d expect in novel that focuses on art, and how much people can love art. I think this is especially true of Will- he’s an art historian who is obsessed with art, and yet when he talks about a lot of these pieces, it’s really cursory stuff. I wasn’t expecting something like The Goldfinch levels of detail, but some background and context for the pieces would have been useful and would have added some depth to the story.
Similarly, while I initially enjoyed the themes of colonialism and Western museums stealing art and refusing to return it, again it was a bit of a shallow discussion. It felt like it was just repeatedly telling me: art belongs to the creator, art theft is bad, over and over. Having recently re-read books like Babel and Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, it just felt a lot less complex and multifaceted.
Overall, I’m giving Portrait of a Thief:
I really loved the prose, and the characters, but it felt like there was a lot of research missing from the story, and this meant that the actual art thefts and discussions about art were very shallow. I enjoyed the discussions about colonialism and whether museums should be able to keep art stolen in wars and invasions, but again this was sort of repetitive and a bit underdeveloped, especially when compared to other novels with similar themes.
Has anyone else read this book or plans to? What do you think about it? Let me know by joining in the discussion in the comments section down below! <3
