I, like many (I am sure), do love a heist movie. There is something so satisfyingly escapist about them and I revisit classics like Ocean's 11 and The Italian Job any time I'm looking for a comfort watch. Plus, I am a *huge* fan of the entire Fast and Furious franchise, #sorrynotsorry. (Which, after reading the Acknowledgements, it seems I have that in common with the author, so...take that world!) Anyways, the point of all that was, I was very intrigued in this combination heist and "reclaiming from colonist powers" plot and was excited to receive an eARC from NetGalley (which I am only a little late, in consideration of the publication date, in getting to).  

 

Portrait of a Thief follows five Asian and Asian-American college students from across the US, who come together to form a team (bank-rolled by a mysterious nouveau riche Chinese benefactor) to steal back five sculptures, scattered at museums across the globe, that were looted from the old Summer Palace in Beijing years ago. Will Chen leads the group, a senior at Harvard with a passion for art and a view at claiming a place in history for himself. His sister, Irene Chen, is the perfect daughter, a public policy major at Duke who has the personality and charisma to talk anyone into (or out of) anything. Alex Huang dropped out of MIT to work at a company in Silicon Valley to bring more income to her family, joining the team as the "hacker." Lily Wu is a friend of Irene's from Duke, a car racer in her free time who acts as the getaway driver. And last in Daniel Liang, a childhood friend of Will and Irene, pre-med at Stanford, whose father works for the FBI as part of an art crimes division. Together, they battle familial and intergenerational expectations of success, individual life goals of greatness, and the long history of western colonialism and cultural theft. 

 

My first impression, and possibly the strongest overall impression, that I had of this novel was the reflective writing style and (very-not-breakneck) pace of the story. I feel like this is an important place to start because, while it wasn't bad, it was definitely wildly different from the internal expectations I had and I had to adjust to it as a reader. I read "heist" and expected fast moving. But this had a sort of dreamy, spacey quality to the writing. As I got farther into the story, and realized that this actually fit the story really well. Li really nails the "existential dread of getting close to the end of college" feels, that fear of what comes next, mixed with the dread that this is all there is. And with all five of the main characters struggling with their own variations of that, as they decide whether or not to get involved, to take a risk like this with their future ahead of them versus the stagnant ennui of young adulthood, as well as dealing with the complex emotions of being split/not-belonging to two different countries/cultures (who deserves/gets one's allegiance and how does one prove it?), that contemplative and evaluative tone does fit with the reality of these characters. Overall, it's more an artsy, ethereal, philosophical take on a heist, which I started skeptical of, considering the high stakes subject matter, but in the end appreciated as an interesting and unique choice. 

 

Other than that primary point of pacing and stylistic choice, I was, from the start, very much into this story. Honestly, it does seem a little too convenient that all these young people with the exact necessary, specific skills already were acquainted. However, I was totally willing to suspend disbelief to see how it plays out, for entertainment purposes and, a little bit, to watch a fantasy that I'd be way too chicken to ever take a chance on myself, play out. And I know I said the overall pacing was slower than expected, and there was less action than I'd thought (though that makes sense, with college-aged protagonists with somewhat limited financial resources), but the tension in the plot development did build in a tangible way during and after the first heist, as the "waiting for the other shoe to drop and we get caught" feelings start to hit and grow. This is mirrored by the rising burden of expectations the team puts on themselves in finishing and getting away with their mission, the weight of their potential success and the hopes they've each pinned on it, and how it's come to symbolize something greater both culturally and individually. It makes you feel, as the reader, that they are fast approaching precarious levels of risk-taking because they are unwilling to admit defeat, and that's a lot of well-developed literary tension-building.  

 

And then: the ending. I loved it! What a phenomenal "twist" that allowed for everything to be wrapped up with a positive outcome (the one you're cheering for, as the reader), and yet within a more or less believable, realistic way considering the overall lack of resources and preparedness from this naive-ish (in the not-yet-disillusioned-and-still-sort-of-hopeful way) group of young adult thieves. And really, Li crushed it with the perfect "sepia toned, promise of the future, heist movie ending" vibe too. So satisfying, on so many levels. 

 

And so, though I started out fairly hesitant, by the end, I would call myself a fan of this one. It was really entertaining, the right amount of tense, relatable (if you've ever felt family pressure, an existential un-surity of the future, or that cultural in-between of children of immigrants), and a phenomenal *pop-culture* way of calling out imperialist cultural theft and reclaiming it back to its origins in a really satisfying way. 

 

“Who could determine what counted as theft when museums and countries and civilizations saw the spoils of conquest as rightfully earned?” 

 

“And how to explain this – the ache he felt when looking at the lines of a sculpture, how history could be found, made, left behind by an artist’s deft hand?” 

 

“For all that she loved it, she had wanted nothing more than to leave.” 

 

“…the empty space it had carved within her. How it felt to search and never find. All these years, and Lily had never known how to love a place and not leave it behind.” 

 

“An experiment, he called it, and what else was it but the five of them trying to control every variable they could and live with the outcome?” 

 

“How could he explain how it felt to know, with a terrible and unflinching certainty, that you were not enough for your dreams? There was so much he wanted, so much that would always be out of reach.” 

 

“Art could be beauty, but it was also power.” 

 

“…they talked not of the future but of the past. Immigration stories and unfamiliar history, what it was like to grow up knowing you had more than all your ancestors combined. Privilege, responsibility, all those words that sometimes had a weight too heavy to bear. In the end, that was what this heist was: a way out. If they could do this, it might be enough.” 

 

“All parents leave their own scars. We’re the ones who have to heal from them.” 

 

“It might have been inevitable. But it still hurt.” 

 

“…[she] was learning what it was like to be proud of where she came from. Galveston, China, all these places that were hers, by birth and by blood. They were not all she was, but they were a part of her. She would claim it at last.” 

 

“They had always dreamed of the same things. How to make this life their own, how to love a country that had left them behind.” 

 

“Once, he had thought the diaspora was loss, longing, all the empty spaces in him filled with want. […] But diaspora was this, too: two cultures that could both be his, history that was waiting to be made.”