Jack Maggs: A Novel
by Peter Carey
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Book Summary Information
Author: Peter CareyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-02-22
ISBN: 0679760377
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Jack Maggs: A Novel
Book Review: A Dickensian romp,,,or Henry Kingsley?
Summary: 4 Stars
Its 1837,and Jack Maggs returns to London from Austrailia to seek Henry Phipps.Transported for life he comes at great risk. By chance he enters service as a footman to Percy Buckle, Phipps' next door neighbour.As he awaits his quarry he meets Tobias Oates, a famous young author who also dabbles in the new art of 'magnetism'. Hypnotising Maggs leads to secrets being disclosed and personalities unlocked....
Carey is an able writer who has won numerous prizes and acolades-who am I to criticise?-but to me as someone widely read in the great writers, there is always something lacking in Carey's novels; they all lack an element that would make him great(and justify the status) rather than just a capable writer of fiction that is more literary than the block busting beat seller writers, but short of the literary standards of true greats.
'Jack Maggs' seems to be Carey's version of a Dickens' novel with parallels such as Oates being 25;its 1837 and he's just written an acclaimed comedy novel (24 year old Dickens wrote the acclaimed comic novel 'Pickwick' in 1837)Maggs became rich in Austrailia and paid for a young orphan who had shown him a kindness to be a gentleman (Magwich in 'Great Expectations')and Carey touches on the social issues of transportation,Victorian poverty and the snobbery attached to the word 'Gentleman'. But none of this really well enough to be a clever literary take on Dickens, or Conradian enough to take you into a heart of darkness. It remains light; maybe more akin to the populist Victorian writer Henry Kingsley than to Dickens.
'Jack Maggs' is a good tale capably told, but just lacking that something that I expect of someone as feted as Carey;something Carey just doesn't have as a writer.
Perhaps Carey is Austrailia's Franzen?!
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