Jack Maggs

Constructed in the style of a soap opera, this novel is a tribute to Dickens' work, Great Expectations, in which the hero Pip dreams of becoming a "gentleman" thanks to an inheritance that turns out to come from an escaped convict. London, 1837 Jack Maggs, deported as a criminal to Australia for many years, is back. Despite his mysterious past, he managed to get hired as a valet for Percy Buckle, a wealthy merchant who practiced magnetism sessions with a few friends. Among them is Tobias Oates, a successful young writer obsessed with the notion of criminality.

Fearing that they will divulge his shameful past, especially to Mercy Larkin, the maid with whom he is in love, Jack Maggs threatens them without being able to free himself from their hypnotic powers. What are the connections between Maggs and the young dandy Henry Philips, the unseen owner of the house next door? What does the shadowy Maggs write night after night, hidden in the house inexplicably empty of Philips? From mystery to mystery, from adventure to adventure, after countless twists and turns worthy of a master soap opera, Maggs will finally manage to leave for Australia with his sweetheart. And in 1860 Tobias Oates published The Death of Jack Maggs, after the death of the man who inspired this book.

This imaginative and daring novel is a vibrant homage to Dickens' work, Great Expectations. Peter Carey deploys all his novelistic art here to animate enigmatic characters swept up in truculent, often melodramatic adventures, nourished by secrets, cheating, love and possession.