Jack Maggs : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing in many ways
Review: The premise of the book is very good and even the characters are excellant but after that it falls short. I love Dickens and this book is a sore excuse for a spin off. While set in the time of Dickens little else here resembles a Dickens work. The plot is just your standard modern day [same old stuff]. This is the kind of book that makes you so sick of modern day literature that you long to read the old classics like Great Expectations again. Unfortunately, Dickens is dead while Carey lives on to write more sub-par books.

Rating:
Summary: Another Peter Carey Gem
Review: This is the third Peter Carey novel I have read in 2004. (The others were "The True History of the Kelly Gang" and "My Life as a Fake".) And while these books have very different settings, characters, and narrative styles, I find myself with the same broad reaction to each.

First, I feel that "Jack Maggs", like "Gang" and "Fake", features brilliant writing and a fully involving narrative. For these reasons, I find Carey's novels hard to put down, and I zip through them fascinated, in just a few days.

Second, each of these books contains a book within the book. In "Gang", there are Ned Kelly's letters. In "Fake", there is the work of Bob McCorkle, the working class poet and naturalist of genius. In "Jack Maggs", there is the Dickens novel "Great Expectations", with Carey offering modern interpretations of Pip's relationship with Herbert Pocket and Magwitch's obsession with Pip. And certainly, "Maggs" offers some insight into Dickens, who is captured in the character Tobias Oates. Those who love books and writing certainly appreciate this component of a Carey novel.

Third, I would say that Carey's books, while great literary pleasures, are also slightly limited. This is because, at least for me, the experiences of his characters never reach beyond the dynamic of the book. Indeed, I have never recognized in these three novels a dynamic or conflict in my own life, which Carey has scrutinized. The books, in other words, seem masterfully self-contained. They are a bit like Joseph Cornell boxes-brilliant, beautiful, and in odd balance. And, they face inward.