Revie: Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

Blurb from Goodreads:

Ocean’s Eleven meets The Farewell in Portrait of a Thief, a lush, lyrical heist novel inspired by the true story of Chinese art vanishing from Western museums; about diaspora, the colonization of art, and the complexity of the Chinese American identity.

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.

Equal parts beautiful, thoughtful, and thrilling, Portrait of a Thief is a cultural heist and an examination of Chinese American identity, as well as a necessary cri­tique of the lingering effects of colonialism.

 This started off with such an interesting premise that it surprised me when it fell a bit flat.  The research and matching of certain plot points seemed to lack editing and ultimately left the book a bit lackluster for me.  The best parts were the traveling although they were glossed over.  I could see this being a movie and all of these unknown like the research and the planning that should have been explicated better could be explained through a montage.  I would recommend this if you liked Impostor Syndrome by Kathy Wang. Something in the two books reminded me of each other.  Hope you have better luck!

Portrait of a Thief comes out next week on April 5, 2022 and you can purchase HERE.

How to enter a museum, to navigate around guards, security systems, everything that was designed to keep them out. How to retrieve the sculpture waiting for them in a glass case and beneath the sharp eye of a camera. How to leave a museum and a country without getting caught. How to build alibis, how to lie, how to do all the things that might make them criminals. 

How to live with themselves if this all went wrong.