Exceptionally well-written but somewhat frustrating.

In many ways with Jack Maggs, Peter Carey does the hard part. He evokes Victorian London brilliantly, avoiding the pitfalls of overseas authors who love the idea of it as a setting but fundamentally don't understand it. He creates an intruiging mixture of characters and looks at a number of aspects of this world from an entirely fresh perspective.

For me, though, the plot is overly complicated much of the time and not entirely convincing. There are also a lot of cases where things are hinted at and not fully explored to the extent that I felt like I had missed something. He is a great descriptive writer but I just couldn't quite get into the head of the characters at times and completely understand them.

Overall, I could only admire the technical side of the writing but was ultimately left slightly frustrated and disappointed at how superb this could have been.