2006 book 105

Peter Carey's Theft: A Love Story
Finally, I finished reading this over my lunch break today. I guess there's been a lot of hubbub that Carey, who's twice won the Booker, didn't make this year's shortlist. But I can tell you why right now: it wasn't a very good book. Its main character is a has-been Australian painter who falls in love with the wife of the son of a famous dead artist who's working some angle or another. The novel is narrated in turns by the painter and his brother, who has a very Lennie-from-Of-Mice-and-men feel, and who occasionally narrates phrases in all-caps for no discernable reason. Sigh. I hate when writers use some weird technique to try and make their narrative voice more interesting or whatever (I am thinking here of Ali Smith's latest, which I really hated, but which the folks over at Bookslut can't get enough of--so maybe some readers were into this little conceit of Carey's. Who knows). Plus there was a lot of that artist-behind-the-scenes/mentality-of-the-creation-process crap--I guess writers like to write what they know, but it's not too interesting for the non-artistic types. Anyway, lame book. The plot was really not that compelling either. Props for the cover art, though.