SOURCE: Miller, Karl. “Late Expectations.” New Republic 218, no. 16 (20 April 1998): 40-1.

In the following review, Miller contends that Carey's purpose for writing Jack Maggs is to refute the stereotypical portrayal of Australia as a land of criminals and brutes.

Peter Carey first saw the light in Bacchus Marsh, Australia, in 1943, and went on to write books which are steeped in Bacchus Marsh and its extensive environs. He now lives in New York, having come up from down under like the hero of his new book, which is set in nineteenth-century London. He is an Australian and a cosmopolitan. He has a fine body of work behind him, and in front of him too, we are entitled to hope, for all the distance that he has placed between his native country and first subject-matter, which have served him so well. His energy and versatility, his fertility and flair, are prodigious...