'Theft: A Love Story', Peter Carey

Ah, Peter Carey. ‘’My Life as a Fake’’ bored me to tears. ‘’True History of the Kelly Gang’’ was great. ‘’Theft’’ appeared in various Book of the Year lists, so despite concerns of my so far patchy record with Mr Carey I gave him another go. Damn.

I’ve read a few books ‘’about’’ Art (with a capital A) in the past and I’ve never really liked them. I have a somewhat peculiar relationship with art. I like going to art galleries, but only some, and only sometimes. I have my favourites: I loyally visit the BP Portrait Award and Schweppes Photographic Prize every year (the former being by far the highlight of the Aberdonian cultural calendar and thus one of the few things to do in the Christmas holidays). When I’m in London it’s rare that I don’t end up in the Tate Modern or National Portrait Gallery. And yet I think I’m somewhat of a fraud. Whilst I may not have the Supermarket Sweep approach of certain unnamed members of my family (you know who you are!) I do struggle to spend more than 5 minutes in front of a painting. My art history is also abysmal despite having Higher Art, which did require me to load up my short term memory with a bunch of facts about the Impressionists which I instantly forgot (ditto Coleridge, differentiation, or indeed mostly everything I learnt at school with the notable and worthy exception of touch typing). Art’s also part of my life from another angle: I have, on numerous occasions, been known to dabble in sketching, painting, photography; indeed, I spent many a memorable Wednesday evening in Geneva at Life Drawing classes, being exposed to the myriad combinations of body hair and tattoos of the young Genevoises (now that is an education).

Which is a very long way of getting round to saying that whilst I would categorise myself as somehow who likes art, for some reason, I have a problem with reading about it in the abstract. I am being somewhat unfair here on ‘’Theft’’ which, to give it some credit, also has many other subjects, including the complicated relationships between the protagonist, his lover, and his mentally ill brother. However there was enough art in there to distract me. People talking about art irritates me even more, and there’s a lot of it here. Chuck into that a lot of pretension and people taking themselves too seriously and it really wasn’t up my street. In the meantime I will continue to enjoy my arbitrary approach to art appreciation whilst avoiding anyone who might actually know what they’re on about and show me up.