"Theft: A Love Story" is a novel with much to recommend it but one very serious flaw.

It has all the exuberance I've come to expect from my previous reading of Carey's fiction ("Oscar and Lucinda", "My Life as a Fake"), no more so than in the figure of Michael "Butcher" Boone. Michael, the son of a butcher, hence his nickname, is an artist from the Victorian outpost of Bacchus Marsh (curiously, the birthplace of one Peter Carey) whose career is on a downward spiral. We first meet him in Bellingen, a backwater town in northern New South Wales, where he has retreated after his divorce and a stint in prison to caretake the house of his patron Jean-Paul and to start painting again.

Through appalling winter weather comes Marlene Leibowitz, the wife of Olivier who is the offspring of famours painter Jacques. Marlene and Olivier have the "droit moral", the power to decide if a painting is genuinely one by Olivier's illustrious forebear or not. Marlene has heard that Butcher's neighbour, Dozy Boylen, has what might be a lost Leibowitz. However, after Marlene's visit, the painting disappears, and the suspicions of the investigating detective Amberstreet fall on Butcher, who thinks Butcher's new work might conceal the stolen Leibowitz.

His new connection with Marlene turns Butcher's career around. He first follows her to Sydney and she helps secure exhibitions of his work first in Tokyo and then New York City. However, it turns out that his meeting and falling for the scheming Marlene might not have been quite such an accident as it first appears.

Butcher's voice is wonderful, simultaneously earthily Australian with more than a hint of arrogance yet also with a hefty dose self-pity. His self-delusions as it becomes increasingly obvious to the reader what Marlene is up to give the novel a richly ironic and comical aspect.

Yes, the plotting is as contrived and convoluted as one would expect from a writer who dreamed up the idea of his characters dragging a glass church into the 19th century Australian outback but the sheer force of Carey's writing made this reader willing to forgive on that score.

However, here's what I couldn't forgive. Butcher is not "Theft..."'s only narrator. In his care is his 220lb. mentally handicapped brother, Hugh, and the narrative switches back and forth between the two brothers. Alternating with him throughout the novel are chapters told by his Hugh is key to the structure of the novel, serving his purpose to pinprick his brother's self-obsession and help the reader see Marlene's true motives, but Carey doesn't even get close to making Hugh convincing.

This is not the almost mechanical voice of an autistic savant or learning disabled person - Carey can't resist showing off. The vocabulary is too wide, the phrasing too colourful. Perhaps, having an autistic younger brother myself, I'm hypercritical on this point, but for me it spoilt what was otherwise an entertaining and acerbic look at the world of modern art from the point of view of two naïves loose within it. A shame. ( )

Australian tale about art theft and fraud and a woman who is at once ruthless and beautiful. Must concentrate on plot development but worth the effort. ( )

Great narration in two voices, one of an artist, ‘once famous’ painter, Bill (Butcher) Bones, and the other one of his ‘slow’ and crazy brother, Hugh (Slow) Bones. In the end, one didn’t prove crazier than the other in my opinion; I liked them both too, and the whole book with its plot, tempo and subject matter- art, artists, art dealers, love, swindles, and how it is all assessed. It sucked me right in and didn’t relent until the very end. It’s very well written, ironic, intelligent, informative, facetious and above all, very entertaining. ( )

Hugh's chapters were just the best. Very cool read. ( )

Theft is great fun. Told in alternating voices of “ex-really famous” painter Michael Boone (“Bucher Bones”) and his mentally-challenged brother, Hugh (“Slow Bones”), the story takes on a musical sort of quality skipping from Australia to Japan and to New York. A bitter divorce, a complex art scam, a love story of sorts, a murder and the delicate relationship between two brothers combine for a humorous, magical roller coaster ride. Carey’s command of language is, in a word, brilliant. ( )