Opening a Peter Carey novel is a little like being seduced. The winner of two Booker Prizes, Carey is sure of winning you over. There is never a pause or moment of hesitation in his writing, immediately absorbing you within his fictional constructs by the power of his narrative voices.

		"THEFT: A LOVE STORY" By Peter Carey. Knopf ($24)

Like determined suitors, his characters convince you to invest yourself in their emotional navigations, no matter how idiosyncratic their decisions or how frustrating their fictional worlds become.

In his new novel, Carey transports us to the Australian countryside of the 1980s, where the talented and once well-regarded painter Michael "Butcher" Boone is sliding into what may become obscurity. He's is the executor of the estate of a former collector as well as the primary caregiver of his mentally challenged brother, Hugh. Both sets of tasks overwhelm his limited nurturing abilities.

Closer to home, Michael's wife and son have left him, devastating him emotionally. He's also ruined financially thanks to a prison term because of his mismanaged affairs.

Michael charges his painting supplies to his collector's account and tries to get back to work only to be interrupted by Marlene, a siren who arrives in muddy Manolo Blahniks.

She bursts into Michael's hermitage with tales of deceptions and forgery -- her dead father-in-law was a famous painter and her husband has the legal right to determine which paintings are really his.

Looking for easy marks to help her in this sham, she gets mixed up instead with the Boone Brothers, who are anything but easy.

Successfully bewitching Michael, Marlene risks making an enemy of Hugh, but she's too invested in reclaiming her father-in-law's paintings to worry about the brothers' emotional needs. The artistic folly careens forward.

Reluctantly removing themselves from their hideaway, the brothers travel to Japan and New York, sleuthing their way through the lies and deceit of art dealers and gallery owners.

In what are some of the most disturbing and fascinating chapters in the book, Carey lets Hugh tell the story. There is a determined play and power to the language of an idiot savant, a quirkiness that abstractly reflects the artificial seamlessness of his more talented brother's depiction.

This is dizzyingly poetic prose that eventually examines the struggle of creative genius or why some people, even with all their frustrations and failure, cannot help but put paint onto canvas.

Mixing literary and visual metaphors, Michael refers to an empty canvas as the Great White Whale. "At this teetering moment I was everything that makes an artist a hateful loathsome beast. That is, I stole, I grabbed, I suck love like Phthallo Green sucks light."

There has been much debate lately over the truth in memoirs, which, after reading the brilliant fictional world created by Carey seems trite.

Dear reader, I say, Pish-posh! Why not accept that any writing is creative and go with someone who can transport you into a new and utterly convincing world? In "Theft," the characters are just that, a refreshing change from the dreary domesticity and realism of contemporary fiction.

Viewing the world through a totally different point of view -- something other than a near approximation of our own thought patterns -- is one of the very purposes of reading.

If you haven't already, you might want to introduce yourself to Peter Carey. "Theft" is a virtuoso inauguration, not to mention a great first date.