SOURCE: Allen, Brooke. “A Novel as Rich as London.” New Leader 81, no. 3 (23 February 1998): 13-14.

In the following review, Allen provides a favorable assessment of Jack Maggs and offers insights to the novel's underlying message.

The question of how much or how little “real life” influences the construction of an author's characters has long been debated by both readers and writers. In Jack Maggs, a historical novel that is partly an homage to Dickens' Great Expectations, the Australian novelist Peter Carey—whose previous books include Oscar and Lucinda—enters the fray by inventing a fateful meeting between a figure very much like Charles Dickens and one of his great characters, the convict Abel Magwitch.

It is 1837, the year of 18-year-old Victoria's accession to the throne. The Industrial Revolution is in full swing and London, the epicenter of the industrialized world, is in the process of radical change. The Haymarket...