He has also become the full-time caretaker of his brother, 'Hugh the Poet and Hugh the Murderer, Hugh the Idiot Savant,' and life is not easy for either of them.

Jean-Paul has given him a place to stay and studio space so he can create new masterpieces (from which he expects a cut). At the same time, he creates two splendid characters through whose limited vision this world is viewed-Michael 'Butcher' Boone, a successful avant-garde artist from Australia, now experiencing hard times, and his 'slow' brother Hugh, a 220-pound giant with little control over his emotions and a penchant for breaking the little fingers of people who get in his way.īutcher, who lost his best paintings when they were declared 'marital assets' during a particularly nasty divorce, has just been released from jail after trying to steal them back, and he is now living in the 'boonies' of northern New South Wales, as caretaker for the property of his biggest collector, Jean-Paul Milan. Two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey writes his most dazzling novel yet, a send-up of the art world, filled with satire about dealers, auction houses, compulsive collectors, forgers, conservators and technicians, art researchers, catalogue writers, those who crate and ship paintings, and even the artists themselves. Shame, doubt, self-loathing, all this we eat for breakfast every day.' We live with the knowledge that, alongside Cezanne or Picasso, we are no-one, were always no-one, will be forgotten before we are in the ground. We start with it and we are always ready to return to real failure, the bottom of the barrel, the destruction of our talent by alcohol or misery. Over to read a review of His Illegal Self) Over to read a review of Parrot and Olivier in America)

Theft by peter carey