A review by jaan
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

I read another review, before I picked up Portrait of a Thief, that said this book is heavy, and not in a good way. The sentences are weighty. They bear down on you unceasingly. However, the lushness of this book would be well-captured on film. I partially agree with this assessment for one reason: there aren’t many ways to tell grief in writing, so the author must use words like grief, loss, hollow. There are, however, millions of ways to show grief in screenplay. This book spends a lot of time on grieving—for home, for parents, for history. I did like the way the author handled grief, but it was TOO present, both in the narrative and in the lives of the characters. There is some discussion of how Will approaches everything, especially love, as being temporary, and as I was reading, I really hoped that Li would write the temporality of grief into a bigger motif than it ended up being. 

The first quarter-ish of the story is too romantic. Melancholy pervades the book, even during supposedly tense, high-action scenes like those of speed racing. This melancholy is further oppressive in the sense that it impedes Li's ability to properly develop her characters. They are distinct, but don't have enough depth. They're also, put simply, too sexy. Save for a few group-project scenes, the characters don't interact with each other like real people would (I went to school with people as exceptional as Li's characters, but I didn't find that she gave any of them the complexity, depth, and even lightheartedness they deserved).

I’m glad I stuck with this book, though. As a student of postcolonial literature and art history, I appreciated the story! I just think the target audience for this book is the ninth grade. It would be really excellent for my little sister in a few years. 
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