Jack Maggs

In 1997 a signed copy of Peter Carey's book arrived in our home and was read by one of us. I always meant to get around to reading it too, and when it was my turn to make nominations to the book group that forms much of my reading this was the selected fiction nomination, so I have at last encountered the Dickens re-imagined story of what an ancient contemporary New York times review called "Great Extrapolations" . This is Carey's  take on the eponymous convict Abel Magwitch.

 Of course Carey is too skilled an author to write a sequel to that book: instead of directly choosing some personal experience for inspiration, he picked an inspiring story that obviously influenced him and made it his own with sketch of Victorian London that Dickens could be proud of, seemingly as fresh as a mobile phone video. Carey has his own set bizarre characters, and even inserts a Dickens alter ego into the plot, picking up several of the master's less admirable characterisics- an author of serials whose principal purpose is to make money, dabbling in mesmerism, too fond of young girls, but unlike Dickens his prose is pedestrian...

Maggs is not Magwitch, and the very dislikeable Henry Phipps is not Pip, but Carey gives them depth and authenticity.   The story, even though it didn't win a prize, shows why Carey has two Man Booker awards.

P.S.: My colleagues all enjoyed the book. Remarkably, two had the same first edition acquired and now read in similar circumstances to me. At post-discussion dinner the nominator chooses the wine. I found a most respectable Heschke shiraz grenache mouvedre blend to accompany a shared chateaubriand and worthily complement a great literary experience.