Grace D. Li’s debut, Portrait of a Thief is gorgeous. As riveting and slick as it is thoughtful.
Think of it as Oceans 11 meets The Fast and the Furious with a crew of Chinese American college students. But this crew is reclaiming looted Chinese art and antiquities from Western museums.
While the heist plotline is totally entertaining, it’s also totally implausible at times (especially on the technology side). This crew succeeds almost on dumb luck. But technology aside, the work Portrait of a Thief is doing as commentary on colonialism and diaspora is top-notch. Will and his crew all represent different threads of the Asian diaspora, relating to their culture and ethnicity in wildly different ways. And what they learn about themselves through this series of heists is fascinating.
Honestly, I loved seeing the high achievers be the Cool Kids for once. I can’t wait to see Portrait of a Thief come to life on Netflix.
4 stars
Grace D. Li will be celebrate the launch and sign copies tonight at Books Inc. in Mountain View, CA tonight at 7 p.m. PT.
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