The artistic temperament; Theft A Love Story Peter Carey Alfred A. Knopf: 224 pp., $24 HOME EDITION

• Published in: The Los Angeles times
• Main Author: Kirsch, Jonathan
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, Calif Los Angeles Times Communications LLC 21.05.2006
• Subjects: Books-titles; Carey, Peter; Novels; Theft: A Love Story
• ISSN: 0458-3035

All the while, [Michael Boone] is accompanied by his oversized but underdeveloped brother, Hugh. The most likable thing about Michael is his loyalty to his brother (who is known as Slow Bones), but he is sorely tried by the burden of caring for a man-child. "Sometimes he was so bloody smart, so coherent, at other times a wailing gibbering fool," Michael sighs. "I had Hugh the Poet and Hugh the Murderer, Hugh the Idiot Savant, and he was heavier and stronger, and once he had me down I could only control him by bending his little finger as if I meant to snap it." Exactly here begins the subtle accumulation of clues that turns "Theft" from a love story into a thriller. [Marlene Leibovitz] embarks on a campaign to put Michael back into play in the art market, but she also involves him in a dicey attempt to locate and authenticate the missing works of her father-in-law, a long-dead artist named Jacques Leibovitz, a (fictional) contemporary and colleague of Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. Between manipulations of the living artist and the dead one, Marlene's enterprise attracts the attention of an Australian police detective and art fancier, who sets out in hot pursuit of the star-crossed pair. [Peter Carey]'s work is often described as "literary fiction," a label of uncertain meaning that may prompt some readers to fear an excess of pretty language and a paucity of plot. These fears are unfounded in "Theft." The caper at the heart of Carey's tale is utterly absorbing, and the novel itself is richly ornamented with the tradecraft both of artist and art forger. Thus, for example, we watch as [Bones] is reduced to using house paint fortified with sand and sawdust when he is too poor to afford a supply of proper oils, and we learn how an expert counterfeiter might use a tea kettle, a syringe and a cache of castoff art supplies to defeat the X-rays and chemical analyses employed to detect a faked masterpiece.