Theft: A Love Story

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Theft: A Love Story
TheftLoveStory.jpg
First edition (Australia)
Author Peter Carey
Cover artistJenny Grigg
Tomek Sikora (photo)
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Knopf (Australia & US)
Faber & Faber (UK)
Publication date
9 May 2006
Publication placeAustralia
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages272 pp
ISBN 0-307-26371-1
OCLC 62331104
Preceded by My Life as a Fake  
Followed by His Illegal Self  

Theft: A Love Story is a novel by Australian writer Peter Carey. [1] It won the 2006 Vance Palmer Prize, the Victorian Premier's Literary Award prize for fiction.

Contents

Plot summary

Theft is the story of Michael "Butcher" Boone, an Australian artist whose career is having an early and comprehensive twilight. The novel alternates between the viewpoint of Butcher himself, and that of his "damaged two hundred and twenty pound brother" Hugh. "There is always Hugh," Butcher says, "and you cannot take a slash or park the truck without considering him." As the novel opens, Butcher is fresh out of jail for robbing his ex-wife of his own paintings, paintings that became hers when the marriage ended. Exiled to a remote house owned by a fussy former patron, Butcher is trying to get his career back on track, avoid his creditors and manage Hugh, when - on a stormy, flooding evening - he receives a visit from the mysterious Marlene, described by Hugh as "a GAMINE with tiny boobies and a silk dress you could have fitted in your pocket with your hanky".

Through marriage to Olivier Leibovitz, Marlene is the holder of the droit moral, the hereditary right to authenticate paintings, in this case those of Olivier's dead father, Jacques Leibovitz. Somehow, Butcher and Hugh's farmer neighbour has recently acquired a Leibovitz of mysterious provenance, and Marlene arrives, a vision in Manolo Blahniks tramping through knee-deep mud, to put a validating stamp on it, immediately sending its worth into the stratosphere. [2]

Awards and nominations

Reviews

References

  1. "Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 5 April 2025.
  2. 1 2 "The sacred in the profane" by Patrick Ness, The Guardian, 27 May 2006
  3. "Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction - 2006 Winner". Archived from the original on 11 August 2008. Retrieved 14 April 2008.
  4. "The Man Booker Prize 2006 | The Booker Prizes". thebookerprizes.com. Archived from the original on 1 June 2023. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
  5. "Miles Franklin shortlist announced". The Sydney Morning Herald. 19 April 2007. Retrieved 1 August 2022.
  6. ""2007 NSW Premier's Literary Awards "". Sydney Morning Herald, 30 May 2007. 30 May 2007. Retrieved 16 January 2025.
  7. Review by Ron Charles, The Washington Post, 7 May 2006