Peter Carey: Jack Maggs
I made an undertaking to myself to read the annual Booker prize winner after having read A.S. Byatt's Possession and being quite taken, yes by the love stories and the mysteries but more, I recall, by the wonderful skewering Byatt gave to the world of academic intelligentsia who invented the whole "deconstructionist" mumbo jumbo.
In 1991, I read the next Booker winner, Ben Okri's The Famished Road....well I tried. It didn't like it. I just don't seem to get this "magical realism" thing.
In 1992, I had more luck with Michael Ondatje's The English Patient, and even jotted down my reaction to it at the time.
In 1993, I got cocky. I read Caryl Phillips' Crossing the River and got quite indignant when the Booker Prize committee ruled that Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clark, Ha, Ha, Ha was a better book. I still think Crossing the River is a wonderful book, have done since I read an exerpt in Granta before it was published. The opening lines haunted me. They still do.
I never did get around to reading Paddy Clarke and then the next year James Kelway won for How Late It Was, How Late but with all the controversy about his use of thick Glaswegian making it a hard read, I was never quite up to the challenge. It remains on my unread list.
That list, in fact, is getting embarrassingly long. In 1995 I didn't read Pat Barker's The Ghost Road, in 1996 I didn't read Graham Swift's Last Orders and I haven't read The God of Small Things, the 1997 winner by Arundhati Roy. Lest you think me a complete Philistine, I have read exerpts from the latter two, again in my trusty Granta, but this just doesn't seem to be "enough".
Somewhere between The Famished Road and The English Patient I managed to go back in time and read Remains of the Day [the 1989 winner] and Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda [the 1988 winner]. Both these books knocked me over. Of the two I must say that Remains of the Day is my favourite. In it, Kazuo Ishiguro achieves an economy of words, and a depth of emotion to which most writers cannot even aspire. Oscar and Lucinda is a fine novel too...it is a 400+ page literary page turner, which exudes confidence and takes the reader on a strange and exciting journey. I have returned to each new Peter Carey novel since then with great expectations [that's a joke, you will get it in a minute].
Carey's follow up novel was The Tax Inspector which I thought was even better than "Oscar and Lucinda". It was funny, moving, disturbing and even a little bit educational [I still recall the dinner party discussion about artists' "moral rights" over their creations]. Unfortunately, the Booker Prize committee were all asleep at the switch that year: The Tax Inspector wasn't even nominated.
Next up was Carey's 1996 The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith. I read it. It didn't suck. But it wasn't great either.
Now its 1998 and Carey is back with Jack Maggs, and once again I think I may be back on track in reading a Booker Prize winner, this time before it has even been nominated.
I read about Jack Maggs in a newswire story at work. The New York Times gave it the thumbs up..so I placed an order from my favourite internet bookstore "Wordsworth Books" in Boston. The catalog said that the book was not yet published in the US...but I reserved a copy anyway, and thought that I might see a copy at my doorstep in a few weeks, or months. 3 days later a package arrived from Wordsworth.
Inside was a copy of Jack Maggs autographed by Carey himself. Hey, almost instantaneous delivery of an autographed copy of a book that hasn't even been published..now you know why Wordsworth is my favourite bookstore.
Jack Maggs is a retelling of the story of Abel Magwitch, a criminal Dickens banished to Australia "for the rest of his natural life" in "Great Expectations" [a light bulb should go on for you here]. Magowitch's alter ego Maggs breaks his sentence and bolts back to England, where he claims to have "English business to settle". Turns out that he seeks a reunion with Phipps, an orphan who was kind to Maggs as he was transported in shackles to the loading docks for Australia. Those of you who know Dickens better than I will recognize Phipps as "Pip" the central character of Great Expectations. I really couldn't say which of the many colourful characters in Jack Maggs have a counterpart in Great Expectations...many I assume....but I must honestly say that I don't think I ever read Dicken's book.
Jack Maggs is more than just a retelling of Dickens story though, for Dickens himself [or someone with more than a passing resemblance] plays an essential role in Jack Maggs. The story of Jack Maggs is Carey's speculation on events which might have caused Dickens to invent Great Expectations. By telling a story which overlaps and intersects with Dickens, Carey is able claims Dickens London [and Dickens himself I guess] for his own. In the hands of a consummate wordsmith such as Carey this is a thrilling experience.
Carey takes us into all the familiar places that we know from Dickens, to the world of the poor and the thieves and the beggars, to the other world of the wealthy and Carey tells us that the particular world in which a character lives has little to do with their merits, and everything to do with their luck [whether by birth or more unexpectedly in the case of Mr. Buckle and Mr. Maggs].
Jack Maggs is a great read.