I enjoyed the thrill they each experienced during their heists and really liked the growing camaraderie as the story progressed.
It was much more fun watching these five students who don’t all know each other at the beginning learn to work together. It was fun, but there weren’t a ton of details.
So I read the heist story with little more than amusement. I wasn’t drawn to Portrait of a Thief so much for the heist story as for the story of the Chinese American identity. As a novel that takes an intimate look at that experience, it deeply touched me. It’s a wealthy Chinese CEO in Beijing who wants the artifacts and it’s Chinese American students who have been hired. As a result, the heist plot felt flimsy to me, but I think the point was to give space to the Chinese American experience. They have no clue what they’re doing, but it’s life changing money. After all, it stars five early twenty-somethings in college (and one dropout) trying to steal from museums like the Met in NYC and Drottningholm Palace in Stockholm. Portrait of a Thief stumbles and tumbles, and I tend to think that was the point. But they’re college students and one college dropout, and there’s another crew out there. With the help of his younger sister Irene (the con artist), he pulls together Alex Huang (the hacker), Daniel Liang (the thief), and Lily Wu (the getaway driver). An art history major in his last year, he’s given the chance to assemble a crew and steal five Chinese zodiac fountainheads that had been stolen from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. It started with a business card dropped casually into Will Chen’s pocket while the Sackler Museum at Harvard was being robbed of Chinese art. Mostly, though, I loved how this book made my Chinese American experience feel seen. The relationships they formed were strong and beautiful.
While their motivations to take part were a bit on the flimsy side, I really enjoyed reading about their experiences and struggles, and, most of all, how they learned to work together. It takes five college students from different Chinese American backgrounds and gives them the chance to steal five fountainheads stolen from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing for a wealthy Chinese CEO. Portrait of a Thief is part heist and part Chinese American experience. One Sentence Summary: When college senior Will Chen gets the chance to return art stolen from China, he doesn’t hesitate to form his crew: con artist Irene Chen, hacker Alex Huang, thief Daniel Liang, and getaway driver Lily Wu.
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