JACK MAGGS

Steven Crossley has precisely the British voice needed for a novel set in nineteenthcentury London. Booker Prize-winning author Peter Carey shows us how and why Charles Dickens might have written Great Expectations. Despite Crossley's brilliantly modulated performance, the book engages the intellect more than the heart. This seems odd, since Dickens himself was a literary tear bucket. Great liberties have been taken here with the writer's life. The Boz, if living, might have agreed with the fellow tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail. "If it weren't for the honor in it," he said, "I'd as soon have walked." B.H.C. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/MAR 99]