Jack Maggs (Paperback)

This thrilling and original story, part historical novel and part literary fantasy, is one of the most exciting, erudite, and compulsively readable works of fiction to come along in recent years.

London, 1837. Jack Maggs, a foundling trained as a thief, betrayed and deported to a penal colony in Australia, has reversed his fortunes. Under threat of execution he returns to London after twenty years of exile to try to fulfill his well-concealed heart's desire. Masquerading as a footman, Maggs places himself in the rather eccentric household of Percy Buckle, Esquire. But when the unlikely footman comes under the scrutiny of the brilliant and unscrupulous young novelist Tobias Oates, an enthusiastic dabbler in mesmerism, Maggs's secrets are revealed and he is forced to take desperate, sometimes violent action. A powerful and unusual homage to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, Jack Maggs displays all of Peter Carey's broad historical and artistic knowledge, his masterful command of character, and his powerful moral vision.

Fulfilling Expectations Peter Carey's new novel, Jack Maggs, spins an enthralling variation on a Dickens classic

Banished for life to New South Wales, a convict eventually returns to 19th century London, risking hanging if the law discovers him, all because he wants to see Henry Phipps, the young English gentleman he has "made" by sending money from abroad. Does that premise sound familiar? It will to those who have read Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and remember Pip's turmoil when he learns that his elevation in society has been financed by the fearsome felon Abel Magwitch. The novel being described here, however, is Peter Carey's Jack Maggs. What the dickens is Dickens' plot doing in Carey's new fiction?

Nothing very promising, those familiar with postmodernist literary and largely sterile ironies might guess. In this instance, they would be wrong. For one thing, it is not necessary to know a single word of Great Expectations to have a fine, suspenseful time reading Jack Maggs. Carey takes a cue from Dickens but then ad-libs an original and freestanding performance, replete with the sorts of twists and shocks and coincidences that originally gave page turners a good name. And those readers who retain a clear sense of Dickens' novel will encounter a trove of subtle allusions, not just to the 19th century author's life and works but also to the predatory relationship between an inventor of tales and the real-life subjects who find themselves grist for this creative mill.

Jack Maggs' search for Henry Phipps bumps into an immediate obstacle: Phipps is not to be found at the house where Maggs' money installed him. So the convict takes an expedient job as a footman at the house next door, the better to spot Phipps when he returns. Very quickly--Carey mimes perfectly the Victorian novelist's skill at making the implausible seem inevitable--Maggs comes to the attention of one of his master's dinner guests, the rising young author Tobias Oates. When Maggs, serving the wine, collapses from the pain of a tic douloureux in his cheek, Oates volunteers to relieve the servant's anguish by mesmerizing, i.e., hypnotizing, him. Maggs, a man desperate to keep secrets, is at the mercy of Oates, a man avid to exploit them.

The struggle between Maggs and Oates, a character obviously based on Dickens and lacking only the original's extenuating genius, forms the stem of Carey's plot. But, as befits a mock-19th century novel, there are many fascinating exfoliations. All of Carey's major characters come equipped with vivid childhoods--not just Maggs, thrown on a Thames mud flat as an infant and adopted in order to be trained as a thief, or Oates, humiliated and impoverished young by a feckless father. There is also Mercy Larkin, who befriends Maggs and who was sent into prostitution when barely more than a child by her own mother.

Because of the publishing mores of his time, Dickens could not write directly about prostitutes or abortionists or homosexuals, although coded references to them could be discerned by those in the know. In Jack Maggs, Carey breaks the old code and produces something wonderfully new.

Carey's engrossing story is his finest effort. He's created a character that only an author imbued with accounts of transportee [convicts, lags] travails could achieve. The Australian penal colony system was the antithesis of our concept of Victorian morality. Escaped prisoners were rare in Australia - there was nowhere to go. A lag returning to England was unheard of. In any case, the character of every lag underwent a change. They became two people; one the Englishman of a previous life and the other the result of the dehumanizing conditions suffered in that remote continent. Carey captures that duality with finesse and ardor. Driven by his quest, Maggs must adopt a servant's mien, even as his past experiences and cunning born of survival places him above the devious people he encounters daily. He has, after all, been sent to Australia, not for his crimes, but through an unparalleled act of self sacrifice. Maggs must mentally dodge and weave, moving between the worlds of Percy Buckle, Tobias Oates and the street urchin he was before being sent across the seas. Carey's fashioned a tormented figure set in the chaotic venue of 19th Century England.

Equating Carey with Charles Dickens is misleading. Dickens was an investigative journalist turned novelist. In a later age, Theodore Roosevelt would brand such people "muckrakers". Carey's isn't reporting what he's observed, driven by championing the poor Dickens divulged to his Victorian readers. Carey's account is pure fiction, no matter how many real characters and true life conditions he imparts. His creative qualities quite set him apart from Dickens. Simply setting this story in mid-19th Century London doesn't limit it to a Dickensian framework. Dickens, his outlook confined to the British Isles, couldn't have written this book. Carey's Australian background brings subtle nuances to Jack in his characterization. It's unlikely that any Anglo-American author could impart the moods Carey achieves in his portrayal of Maggs. This book is a true prize. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]