7.4 /10 1 Votes
Language English Pages 392 pp OCLC 37500556 Country Australia | 3.7/5 Goodreads Media type Print (Hardback) ISBN 0-7022-2952-0 Originally published 1997 Genre Parallel novel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Publication date 1997 (Australia & UK)
1998 (US) Preceded by The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith Publishers University of Queensland Press (Australia), Faber and Faber (UK), Alfred A. Knopf (US) Similar Peter Carey books, Novels | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Distrustful art imagining a polyphonic common in peter carey s jack maggs
Jack Maggs (1997) is a novel by Australian novelist Peter Carey.
Contents
Jack maggs reading page 233 to 234
Plot summary
Set in 19th century London, Jack Maggs is a reworking of the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations. The story centres around Jack Maggs (the equivalent of Magwitch) and his quest to meet his 'son' Henry Phipps (the equivalent of Pip), who has mysteriously disappeared, having closed up his house and dismissed his household.
Maggs becomes involved as a servant in the household of Phipps's neighbour, Percy Buckle, as he attempts to wait out Phipps or find him in the streets of London. He eventually cuts a deal with the young and broke up-and-coming novelist Tobias Oates (a thinly disguised Charles Dickens) that he hopes will lead him to Phipps. Oates, however, has other plans, as he finds in Maggs a character from whom to draw much needed inspiration for a forthcoming novel which he desperately needs to produce.
Critical reception
Hermione Lee called the book 'an imaginative and daring act of appropriation'.