mothlight reviewed Jack Maggs by Peter Carey (Feux croisés)
Review of 'Jack Maggs' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
I liked this but in a lot of ways it fell short of what I expected. It seems like Carey was having fun, revelling in all of the Dickensian-isms, the descriptions, the characters who have names which describe them (Mrs Halfstairs who lives between floors), the Oliver Twist urchins, etc. But then it seems to have been trapped in that style and it seems like he got lost in it and perhaps got bored with it and just wrapped up the novel blazingly fast in just a few pages. That after the struggle to get into the novel in the first.
There were whole episodes that probably could have been cut out (going to find the Thief-Taker) and used that space instead to have added to the ending to make it a little less abrupt. It was pretty good but there are better Peter Carey works out there.
