Grace D. Li’s debut novel, Portrait of a Thief, which came out in April 2022, delves into the lives of five different Chinese-American college students (or college dropouts) as they are given an opportunity of a lifetime: steal back stolen Chinese art from museums in the West and return them to China for a payday of $10,000,000 each. For Will Chen, the main character of the novel and an art history student at Harvard, this offer gives him the chance to leave his mark on the art world and return stolen Chinese art to its rightful place. He recruits his sister, Irene; best friend Daniel Liang (whose father is an agent in the FBI’s art crimes division); his ex, an MIT dropout who currently works at Google, Alex Huang; and his sister’s roommate Lily Cheng, a street racer in her spare time as a student at Duke for this scheme. Marketed as Ocean's Eleven meets The Farewell, Li attempts to explore what it means to be Chinese-American and how their identity not only shapes your present but your past and future all under the backdrop of a heist novel to varying degrees of success.
When I first heard of this book, it immediately drew my interest. I love heist films and reading a book about a heist seemed like a fun idea. The implication that it would also delve deep into ideas around identity, immigration, repatriation, and the questions surrounding the ethics of who owns art only enticed me more. As I began to read the book, though, I found myself growing more and more frustrated and even at times disappointed. The book was not going where I thought it would, and despite being over 300 pages long, I was left somewhat unsatisfied with the ending.
But before I get too far, I want to just say that despite my frustration with the novel, I did enjoy reading it. For all its faults, it was an incredibly fun book to flip through in between my stressful thesis research and writing process. It had all the elements of a great heist film transferred to a literary format — a ragtag crew of genius 20-somethings, stakes that are both entertaining and noble, schemes involving car chases and hacking the FBI, and a score that is the stuff of my broke-college-student dreams. Yet, even with all those elements, I could not get myself to love this book. I wish I could love this book as much as I thought I would when I picked it up. But the unfortunate side of a great marketing campaign often means that sometimes the actual book will never be able to measure up.
Even while enjoying the book, there were a couple of scenes in the novel that felt random and frankly unnecessary that I just wanted to highlight for potential readers. I will preface this by saying that this book does take place in a quasi-post Covid era. Which is a decision that Li had every right to make, an okay decision, but also a decision I don’t get since it doesn’t add to the overall plot of the novel except by giving Li the chance to bring up Zoom a lot and allowing her characters to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement and protests that erupted during Covid. I found this aspect of her choice questionable considering how she went about including it in the actual book. In the scene where Li brought up the BLM movement, she uses it as a bonding moment between Alex and Irene, who are still growing used to each other’s presence in the heist crew. I am all for solidarity and inclusion but was this novel the best place to include that conversation? Especially since it existed as a throwaway conversation about how “Unjust laws shouldn’t be laws” and that they are justified in their actions. The whole scene felt incredibly trite and her choice to use the BLM movement as a bonding moment and then never bring it up again felt a little tokenistic. Not every book needs to acknowledge every social issue or problem to be relevant and interesting.
That being said, my primary frustration with this book comes down to the fact that this is Li’s debut novel which means that she as a writer is still figuring out some kinks in both her writing style and narrative choices. There was an amazing amount of potential in the book — there were so many scenes with different characters that I found extremely moving and incredibly well-written. The scenes between Alex and Daniel, each having their own complicated feelings towards their identities as Chinese-Americans, and the ways they come to terms with those feelings were stand-outs in the novel. I also loved how Li chose to explore the different facets of what it means to be Chinese-American — people have so many complicated feelings about how they choose to identify and Li beautifully describes and explores these feelings in her novel. I related a lot to Alex when she kept questioning how much skin she had in the game — what did she owe China as someone born and raised in the United States? In contrast, there was also Daniel, who came to America when he was a little kid and still felt Chinese at his core; who is still pained by his choice to give up his Chinese citizenship to make the med school application process easier.
However, there were also moments where some things felt too rushed, too shallow, or even pointless for the overall novel. The romantic relationships between Irene and Alex, and Will and Lily were given a lot of screentime but also felt incredibly rushed in their coming together. Irene and Alex’s enemies-to-lovers moment was very predictable. And Li’s choice to add Daniel into the mix to raise the tension made things more awkward than anything else. This all culminates in an uncomfortable scene mid-way through the novel where Irene, whose sexuality is never explicitly stated but is heavily implied, kisses Daniel, who's been in love with her for years, as a sort-of goodbye to their potential relationship. And also despite this being an actual heist novel, the heist scenes themselves are incredibly rushed and feel lax in detail. I understand that Li might have been commenting on how heist scenes in movies are never very realistic but come on! I could have used more pizazz than simply having them break some glass and throw Molotov cocktails into neighborhoods as a distraction.
The crux of the issue, in my opinion, was that Li was trying to balance too many characters and a few too many plot points. The novel has multiple points of view, all five characters get to take the role of the primary narrator depending on the chapter, which seems like a great idea in theory but in practice leads to a lack of cohesion in the actual plot of the novel. Instead of being given satisfactory surprises throughout the novel, I was often left scratching my head as many of the events at the end of the novel felt like they were coming out of left field. I will say that this book would make a fantastic screenplay but screenplays are a lot different from actual books. I understand the desire for suspense and drama with those gotcha moments but there were many scenes in the novel that I felt would work great in a movie but needed more detail for a novel.
Overall, would I recommend this book to other people? Yes, if you have some spare time and want a fun little read that will keep you interested, I say go for it. This book probably isn’t for art history majors wanting to delve deeper into the discussion over the ethics and reasons for repatriation or people who want a mature and complex look at ideas surrounding nationality and identity. But this is a great book to read while traveling or on break or in your spare time between other more stressful activities. The characters are relatable and interesting, there are moments you are frustrated by their choices but ultimately you end up rooting for them. There are moments in the book that are a little rushed and a little shallow but Li doesn’t ask you to think too deeply about anything — she wants you to have fun. And if you are someone struggling to figure out your identity and place in the world, this would be a great book to start a discussion with yourself and the people around you. My recommendation is to focus less on how this book is being marketed (a novel deeply examining identity and the ownership of art) and read it for what it is: a fun, easy read about a ragtag group of young adults trying to commit some international crime. You’ll probably end up loving more than I did with that mentality.
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