Theft: A Love Story Book

From the two-time Booker Prizeâ??winning author and recipient of the Commonwealth Prize comes this new novel about obsession, deception, and redemption, at once an engrossing psychological suspense story and a work of highly charged, fiendishly funny literary fiction.Michaelâ??a.k.a. â??Butcherâ?â??Boone is an exâ??â??really famousâ? painter: opinionated, furious, brilliant, and now reduced to living in the remote country house of his biggest collector and acting as caretaker for his younger brother, Hugh, a damaged man of imposing physicality and childlike emotional volatility. Alone together theyâ??ve forged a delicate and shifting equilibrium, a balance instantly destroyed when a mysterious young woman named Marlene walks out of a rainstorm and into their lives on three-inch Manolo Blahnik heels. Beautiful, smart, and ambitious, sheâ??s also the daughter-in-law of the late great painter Jacques Liebovitz, one of Butcherâ??s earliest influences. Sheâ??s sweet to Hugh and falls in love with Butcher, and they reciprocate in kind. And she sets in motion a chain of events that could be the makingâ??or the ruinâ??of them all.Told through the alternating points of view of the brothersâ??Butcherâ??s urbane, intelligent, caustic observations contrasting with Hughâ??s bizarre, frequently poetic, utterly unique voiceâ??Theft reminds us once again of Peter Careyâ??s remarkable gift for creating indelible, fascinating characters and a narrative as gripping as it is deliriously surprising.Read More