Carey's novel merges elements of Great Expectations with events from Charles Dickens's life, blurring fact with fiction, or as he states in his epigraph, "The author willingly admits to having once or twice stretched history to suit his own fictional ends." The novel's eponymous hero is moved from the margins of the nineteenth-century text— where he was little more than the troublesome source of Philip Pirrip's wealth—to the center of this late twentieth-century reworking. In contrast to the insipidity of the British characters surrounding him, Maggs is a vibrant and strong protagonist who represents—albeit unwittingly—the opportunities on offer in Britain's penal colonies.

In contrast to the rather nondescript clothes of the other characters, Maggs dresses in a bright red waistcoat. Physically he is an imposing figure, in direct contrast to the stunted growth that adds to the feelings of inadequacy which...