Reviews

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

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lewistronb's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes

4.0

roctothorpe's review against another edition

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adventurous lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This book is pitched as Ocean's Eleven meets The Farewell and so I went into it with a certain set of expectations but this is first and foremost not a heist novel. Rather, the idea of a heist is used as a lens through which to examine Chinese diaspora and Western imperialism.

I absolutely love stories involving stealing shit but this is perhaps one of the most absurdly plotted heists I have ever read. The group of five inexperienced college students pulling off multiple international art thefts? The preparation that consists of watching Ocean's Eleven over Zoom? I just. There was never any tension because everything went perfectly and the "heist" element amounted to just walking in the door and smashing open some display cases. The plotting is completely unbelievable but the book takes itself so seriously. It would have been much more compelling if it fully leaned into being a ridiculous and campy story, aspiring more to the vibe of the movie Joy Ride rather than The Farewell.

Okay, fine - the "Ocean's Eleven" part of the book was a miss and the purpose of this is not to be a thrilling heist novel. I'd be willing to suspend my disbelief (more like throw it off a cliff tbh) if it delivers a solid character story or examination of themes. Unfortunately, this book falls into a lot of my personal least favorite tropes/issues and I am tired of reading stories where:

Every Asian character goes to an elite university
All of the characters in a group ending up (mild spoiler)
in relationships with each other
There is no understanding of how computers and "hacking" works. I could write an entire thesis about this but maybe the most egregious example is that we are expected to believe that Alex can hack into the FBI and multiple museum's security systems but the group felt the need to
break into the Met and physically remove the hard drive to deliver the twist ending ~~that undermines the entire rest of the book~~
. It's giving this NCIS clip where they stop the hackers by unplugging the monitor.
A phrase/sentence structure is repeated over and over to make it sound profound and deep. If you open to a random chapter in this book, more likely than not it contains the phrase "It went like this:" or describes the sky as "full of infinite possibility". I normally am a huge fan of lyrical prose and I did enjoy that quality of the writing at first but it really wore on me and became very repetitive and distracting. It came across like the author could only write one specific type of metaphor and applied that to everything, which diluted its overall effectiveness.
There is endless angst and philosophizing on the Chinese American experience that boils down to feeling simultaneously not Chinese enough and not American enough and/or the crushing weight of parental expectations without ever getting beyond that.

To expand on the last point, I would excuse literally everything else I've already rambled about if it gave a satisfying portrayal of the Chinese immigrant experience but I'm not fully convinced it does even that. The main issue I have with this story is that nominally, there are five different POVs but their perspectives and internal conflicts felt very uniform. The fact that they grew up in vastly different parts of the country, have a mix of 1st and 2nd gen experiences, and (I believe) one character is implied to have roots from Hong Kong rather than mainland China should have leant to a diverse range of experiences and voices. There were a lot of missed opportunities here - why have a passing mention of the COVID pandemic and Black Lives Matter without delving into anti-Asian hate crimes or Black Asian solidarity? Why have literally a single sentence mentioning a character started going to therapy without exploring mental health issues within the immigrant community? Despite its good intentions, I felt like this book did more to uphold the model minority myth than dismantle it. The characters have all attained or are chasing "success" as defined by achieving proximity to whiteness. It feels like The Point™ of this book is very much to dispel the notion that Chinese Americans are a monolith but I really don't think that the approach hit the mark for me.

I don't have many thoughts about the art theft/repatriation angle because I didn't come away from the book with any deeper understandings of this theme. The author repeatedly tells us that art is powerful but doesn't really back it up with any historical context on how the art that we're trying to steal is specifically tied to colonization. The discussion was like, neither here nor there for me because it was all pretty surface level.

All of this being said, the book was entertaining and easy enough to read that I did finish it. It could have been an excellent thriller, an excellent action comedy, or an excellent literary novel but instead it straddles this weird in-between space and is a mediocre execution of both being a silly book and being a serious book. I honestly think this would be fantastic as a movie and I'm really happy to hear that Netflix has picked it up.

gummybeans's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful informative mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

thelovelylibrarylady's review

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adventurous emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This title reads like a movie with its fast-paced, intense storylines. Following five Chinese and Chinese-American college students while they try to take back looted art through a series of museum heists, Portrait of a Thief captivated me. I have seen criticisms of the voices of each character/point of view being undistinguishable, but I did not personally notice that when reading this title. I would pick up another novel from Li in the future because of how much fun I had reading this one!

melodyelizabeth's review against another edition

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2.0

Not good

lbarsk's review against another edition

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4.0

I swear to god I had already reviewed this? Anyway, absolutely devoured it, and for the most part really enjoyed — it makes total sense that the book is being turned into a TV Series because it felt very cinematic and fast-paced! Total fun heist times, with lots of cultural commentary on what it means to be Chinese versus American versus Chinese American thrown in.

The only thing that kept snagging for me, and which I couldn’t ignore when I noticed it like maybe 50 pages in, is that the voices for each character are all SO similar despite them having very divergent wants, needs, personalities, etc. that DO come out VERY clearly when they interact with each other! Li clearly has some favorite sentence structures (and who among us doesn’t!) and some favorite ways to introduce similes, and I guess I just wish that those had been varied from character-POV to character-POV.

Overall, though, a fun NA heist.