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A review by frenchleigh
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
2.0
The author’s note mentions that the book was finished over the course of years, in fits and starts, and it shows—I think the editor did Grace Li a huge disservice (I wanted to play a drinking game for every chapter that started with “it went like this.”). Readers learn not twice, not three times, but at least eight times that a certain character is from a town called Galveston, that the town is small, and how childhood was spent there.
The “twin pandemics” racism and COVID were forcibly injected into the story, and it didn’t feel like a match to the book’s reality. I hated how self-serious the characters got when quietly revealing that they’d learned it was okay to steal, or that they’d started seeing a therapist. Yet despite these “lessons” they also don’t display much respect for gig workers (getting “kicked out” of restaurants), the author is intensely focused on credentials (every single chapter has to remind you which Ivy League school the character attends), and one of the characters is ridiculously cruel and superior toward her peer for the entire novel —either characters or author could’ve done more self reflection if this was going to be a part of their world.
Strengths: interesting idea, easy to see the deep emotional connection between the author, characters, and themes. Some nice lyrical writing about Beijing, diaspora, and art—(but it gets old when it’s happening in every single chapter).
Weaknesses: redundant sentence structure, overly dramatic emotional style, weird and forced references to the pandemic and uprisings against racism, basic information was repeated so often it was a slog to get through the whole thing.
The “twin pandemics” racism and COVID were forcibly injected into the story, and it didn’t feel like a match to the book’s reality. I hated how self-serious the characters got when quietly revealing that they’d learned it was okay to steal, or that they’d started seeing a therapist. Yet despite these “lessons” they also don’t display much respect for gig workers (getting “kicked out” of restaurants), the author is intensely focused on credentials (every single chapter has to remind you which Ivy League school the character attends), and one of the characters is ridiculously cruel and superior toward her peer for the entire novel —either characters or author could’ve done more self reflection if this was going to be a part of their world.
Strengths: interesting idea, easy to see the deep emotional connection between the author, characters, and themes. Some nice lyrical writing about Beijing, diaspora, and art—(but it gets old when it’s happening in every single chapter).
Weaknesses: redundant sentence structure, overly dramatic emotional style, weird and forced references to the pandemic and uprisings against racism, basic information was repeated so often it was a slog to get through the whole thing.