Portrait of a Thief

i'll do my best to mince my (mean) words and clarify my feelings on this book as best as possible, but honestly the more i think about it, the more it upsets me

there are a lot of concepts and archetypes that the author tried to pull in that were not well executed. i love cars and racing, but was severely let down by the clear lack of research spent towards building a car girl who loves to race. it became incredibly clear that the author used major movie franchises like fast and furious and ocean's 11 for this book but did not go the extra (necessary) mile to research the mechanics of things like street racing or oh uh i don't know actual heisting?

if you're thinking of picking up this book for the thrill of a heist, let me stop you there, because you aren't gonna find that in this book. despite great potential for heist glory, any semblance of heist execution in this book is lackluster and far too short for anyone to truly get the thrill or satisfaction of a good heist. none of the characters have any actual heist knowledge and make the stupidest mistakes that boggled my mind. i stopped taking this book seriously at like the 20% mark because of it


what i think shines particularly from this is the discussion of diaspora identity, which is tackled from five different perspectives in a pretty good way. however, as satisfied as i was with the discussion of diaspora identity struggles, it wasn't enough to outweigh my incredible disappointment towards this book.

bruh what is with this streak of me reading low vibe books? i'm UPSET...

I adore the premise (I gave a presentation on the zodiac heads in an art law seminar during 3L!), but I found the characters flat and difficult to relate to. The writing style was very much not for me; descriptions were repetitive and felt like impressionistic but meaningless sketches. There was a lot of underspecified yearning and handwaving towards memories. Personally, as an American born member of the Chinese and Taiwanese diasporas, I don't think the story of how it feels to be Chinese American or how we might feel about mainland China and Chinese culture was well or sufficiently told. I don't think the importance of repatriating cultural patrimony was well explained either. But it was still a fun story, and I have high hopes for the Netflix adaptation!

Definitely more of a 4.5 and I'm rounding up.

Even though I was immediately taken in by the premise of this story when it was first announced, it took me a long while to actually get to it. Meanwhile, I read both glowing and not so glowing reviews about it, adjusted my expectations, and hoped that I would get to it someday. Finally the time came when my friends chose it as a pick for one of my readathon prompts and I had no reason to put it off anymore. And this turned out to be an experience I can't accurately describe.

The first thing I realized while reading this was that promoting this majorly as a heist novel was a mistake. Yes we have a crew of friends and yes they plan and execute multiple heists, but frankly those are a minuscule part of this book. This story is so much more - it's about friendship and family, it's about grief and loss, uncertainty and fear, home and belonging, country and culture, past and future - and how each person is shaped by each of these things. This story is less about the actual heists and more about the motivation behind it, why the characters agree to it, what drives them, what they hope to achieve and if they actual end up getting what they want. It's about feeling the pressure of the eldest child bearing the weight of the family's expectations and never being enough; it's about comparing yourself to your elder brother and trying to one up him in every aspect but not feeling satisfied by it; it's about not being able to communicate the love you have for your family; it's about being born and living all your life in a country but being made to feel like you don't belong; it's about doing everything right and as expected but still feeling unfulfilled; it's about wanting to escape from the small life you have but not knowing where to go next; and also ultimately about feeling the trauma of the legacy of colonialism even when you are generations away from it, and wanting to reclaim those losses in whatever small or big ways you can.

I'm not an American but I live here; I'm an Indian but I don't live there. Being an immigrant is always straddling two worlds and at times feeling closer and farther from both. On the other hand, despite not having any background in art nor having a creative bone in my body, I absolutely love being in the midst of an art museum and just imbibing it all. While visiting the Met was an amazing experience, I didn't know how to feel when I saw the many Indian artifacts, some chipped and broken, because while some may have a clean provenance, I'm not sure of everything. And I know that it's been more than 75 years of independence, and I don't even have any personal stories shared to me by my family about life during colonial occupation, but it's still a legacy that's left an indelible mark on our society and upbringing and culture, and maybe I can't change anything about it, but I can still let myself feel the pain and loss of that history while reading stories like this, and hope that there are people like these characters irl who will do something to get back some of India's looted art back home - because while we can never erase the mark of colonialism, this small reclamation can still be powerful.

I feel like I've gone on a tangent and I didn't even write about the characters. But I don't think I can. There were parts of each of them that felt like me, and parts of them I hoped were me some or the other time in my life. I loved them and felt for them and wanted to be with them. And everything else is too personal for me to share in a review here.

I haven't felt this difficult to write a review in a long while, for a book which had so many elements I loved, living breathing characters who felt so close to me, a full cast audio narration which was amazing, and ultimately full of heart and feelings which were too relatable. I don't know who to recommend this book to but if you are belong to the diaspora, I'm sure you'll find something in it for you. Can't wait to see what the author writes next.

There are two major issues with this book. The first is the characters. They do not have enough differentiating them - in particular, their characterization and their voices, but also in background. What makes the best heist thrillers exciting is a bunch of characters coming from different places, different motivations and often having different goals. There is none of that here - all of these characters are elite college students, all coming from families with high expectations, who all have a similar motivation of returning a piece of their ancestral history to its home. That leaves the story with little friction or dissonance to make things exciting to read, and on top of it there is no distinctive voice to any of them.

Which leads me to the second problem - the prose style. For a heist book, the prose here is very....sleepy. Dreamy, if I'm being generous. It's pretty, at first, but it becomes a droning one-note very quickly. The pace never picks up to create any sense of urgency, and descriptions are often so repetitive that they evoke very little. So while I wanted to stay in it at least to the first of five heists, by the time I got to it, I was mostly skimming. At which point, I realized I had to give up.

This is a pretty big bummer. I was hoping for something exciting, slick and fun. But on top of the very unrealistic premise (five students with zero experience get randomly chosen by a company to conduct a huge complicated heist?? in what universe??), which I was initially willing to let slide as a kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy, this book doesn't have much else to offer in terms of characters or tension.

1.5 stars. This book was so literarily and editorially flawed and the audiobook narrators so painful, I couldn't suspend my belief enough to get an ounce of enjoyment or enlightenment out of it. I'm hoping my book club can help me appreciate some redeeming quality to justify my time spent on this book.

“Art could be beauty, but it was also power. Look, it demanded, and don't turn away.”
~
What a deep, yet fun and thrilling story. We meet five Chinese American college kids who are given an offer to “return” artifacts to China, the catch is they have to steal them from famous museums. I really enjoy the depth we get to see in each character, their past and present, fears and desires. The heists bring unexpected challenges to their lives and relationships, and we get to see how they overcome these speed bumps on their way. The ending took me by surprise, but overall the author has woven some deeper topics into an exciting storyline.

A Chinese-American college student is invited to lead a heist to return Chinese art to China that museums have not ethically acquired. 

In the end, this book is more about the five characters trying to figure out who they are and where they fit in life in the US. The heist parts are fun and it was interesting to see the characters wrestle with their realities and the choices they made in the end. 

Portrait of a Thief had so much potential! Which probably why I'm so deeply disappointed. This book was as much a victim of poor editing as it was poor writing.

The author tried to include too many social issues (i.e., pressure of immigrant children to succeed, colonialism, COVID anti-Asian sentiment, Chinese Exclusion Act, etc.) and character POVs, which resulted in a choppy, unfocused story badly in need of revision. Oh and character motivations were apparently fluid—it's about the money, oh no wait, it's about undoing past cultural wrongs.

The author refused to show-not-tell through this entire book, so descriptions about surroundings and characters were extremely short and repetitive. (i.e., "Alex Huang was not a hacker.", moonlight, daylight, sunlight, changing light, sunrise, "unfamiliar traffic", etc.)

Italics were used in too many different ways to denote:

* Chinese phrases

* Text messages

* Emphasis

* Internal thoughts

You get <i>one</i> way to use italics in a straightforward fiction piece like this so that it doesn't confuse the reader and pull them out of the story.

Chinese characters were not always explained or given enough context to make sense, so superscript with footnotes or endnotes would've been a huge help.

Very few characters get visible defining features or mannerisms—Irene just gets a statement jaw and a sharp jacket, as an example. Awkward character moments took me out of the story, like this poorly written bit about <spoiler>Irene and Alex</spoiler>—which was not earned at all so late in the book:

<blockquote>"For a moment, Alex had had the urge to brush her thumb against the curve of the other girl's cheek, press her fingers to the hollow of her throat."</blockquote>

How does this mechanically work? I had my husband try to press his thumb to my cheek with his fingers along my throat and it felt more like a Vulcan Mind Meld than a romantic gesture. Also "had had"—how did someone not change that immediately and suggest more relationship building early in the story? Two characters being toxic to each other throughout the entire book doesn't qualify as automatic enemies-to-lovers love story.

Then, a pivotal scene after <spoiler>Lily's street race in France</spoiler> was missing. That race was a pretty big character moment for Lily, but the author just skipped to the next thing as if it didn't matter as much as we were led to believe. Same with the final payoff—the final heist could've been so much more exciting a lá Ocean's Eleven. There's little satisfaction in <spoiler>skipping ahead 6 months for a where-are-they-now epilogue. We don't even see the woman from China Poly or anyone related to the company again, even though without her there would be no heists.</spoiler>

And yes, Daniel is a med student but he didn't love being a med student, so I'm confused by this random moment:

<blockquote>"His dad was in his office, the door closed. Daniel walked past it, quietly, and took a shower first, tilting his head up to the steam, the water that sluiced against his skin. As he scrubbed, he named his veins and arteries, mapped out the blood that traveled from vena cava to atria to ventricles, to lungs and limbs and curving spine."</blockquote>

Why? Does Daniel calm his anxiety/stress by mentally reciting and connecting technical terms for the human body? Show me, don't tell me. There were too many commas everywhere in this book and somehow there still managed to be run-on sentences. Using serial commas doesn't mean we don't need more detailed descriptions of people, places, and things.

The plot also needed fixes. Why risk getting caught by picking your friend who's not a hacker to run all tech for your heists? Why <spoiler>take a tour of the museums you're stealing from without wearing disguises and be caught on multiple cameras in broad daylight?</spoiler> Why would two characters fight about their art heist in public? How did Irene <spoiler>get into FBI Agent Mr. Liang's office so easily while both Daniel and Mr. Liang were home?</spoiler> Why <spoilers>didn't Mr. Liang, who is a dedicated career FBI agent, not turn Daniel and co. into the authorities?</spoiler>

Okay, I'm stopping here because this turned into a terrible rant about a book I really wanted to love. Although, I think it could make a great, chaotic Netflix series like Imposters.

TL;DR: Skip the book and watch the Netflix series instead.

The only reason this isn't a 1 star novel is because the cover art is just that beautiful.

There is a good story in this book, we just didn't get to see most of it because the author was too focused on introspection and minutia. She tried very hard to make the characters sympathetic but, in her efforts, made them unlikable.

It is pretty remarkable how she takes these thrilling, exciting, important themes and motifs and fumbles the bag, making them almost unbearably boring.

She made a story wherein these politically significant international art heists are only secondary to the melodrama of young adult angst. A choice I will never understand.

Highly highly disappointing.

my final read of 2023! i generally struggle with rating anything, and i'm having trouble with this book in particular because i think the author gets a solid 5/5 for ambition and a very fun idea but 1.5/5 for execution, and other reviews (like @readwithcindy's) have already covered some specifics of what did end up driving me up a wall about the writing style. my status updates for this book are brimming with snark already so i won't revisit those notes in full, but portrait of a thief read both like it was clearly a debut novel and like a mid-tier fic on ao3 where impossible events are waved past with phrases such as “and then, somehow, x happened,” where a sense of finality is peppered throughout on single-sentence paragraphs (“it would have to be enough”), and where overly dramatic rhetorical questions kept coming back: “of course... how could it not?” / “what else was there?” i found myself doing line edits in my head after a while, which was distracting, and i kept repeatedly skimming ahead just to loop back and “actually” read.

and like, i kinda get it! i tried my hand at creative writing once, and i hated writing scenic descriptions, and would have preferred just focusing on dialogue only (maybe i should have tried writing more plays). the dialogue is the most believable part of any chapter here, and i venture the strongest. i loved when characters argued. i could've done without sentences about the sky being blue or gold or red—or rarely, purple like a bruise.

let's talk about suspension of disbelief. this is what i know (heh): there are elements of the story that are grounded in our reality, like college students doing remote learning during the early parts of the ongoing global pandemic (sidenote: it occurred to me that this book has a certain urgency in its favor in 2022, maybe 2023, maybe not much later than that), and then others that are just... not at all. i don't even mean the heists.

while the storytelling medium didn't work well for me (i am intrigued by how this story will eventually turn out on television), i did think this was a well-timed read, and IRL things layered onto what i enjoyed about it: my parents, now both retired, studying civics questions for their upcoming naturalization tests; my uncle turning in the keys to my grandparents' house in beitou that they built fifty years ago so that it can finally be demolished by the city after months of delay; me propping up a hardcover to read in the twin bed that got transported from childhood home to childhood home to the house my parents now own. asking my mom about the meaning behind 拔苗助长 when i saw it on the page and her adjusting the idiom to 揠苗助長. some might call that projection.

2.5 for being somewhere between “it was OK” and “i liked it” but rounded up because there are no half stars on gr and i'm feeling generous.

also, if this weren't a library book and if i dog-eared pages (ew, never), i'd mark chapter 64—even if once i read it more closely i realized the word “gaze” (heh, iykyk) was used at least five times, including “lifted her gaze” at least twice where the character in question hadn't ever looked away to begin with. spoilers, though.