One of Charles Dickens's most memorable and problematic characters emerges in a more fully developed and freshly sympathetic light in Fagin the Thief, a gripping and atmospheric reimagining of Oliver Twist by Allison Epstein (Let the Dead Bury the Dead; A Tip for the Hangman).
Epstein's version of Fagin was raised in a Jewish enclave of London by a widowed mother, his father having been hanged for theft before his birth. She named him Jacob after "the cleverest of the patriarchs" and imagined a great future for him. But when a pickpocket in dashing clothes catches his eye, the 11-year-old boy talks his way into an apprenticeship and discovers he has a talent. A few years later, after his mother dies, Fagin is alone in the world, with only a knack for moving unseen through all sorts of hunting grounds to preserve him. But he doesn't stay alone for long. His first protégé, the mercurial Bill Sikes, becomes his lifelong friend, his menacing shadow, and ultimately his downfall.
Epstein paints a vivid picture of seedy lower-class London, worthily succeeding Dickens's own. The narrative sometimes diverges from the original, but Epstein's author's note acknowledges these occasions and offers compelling explanations. Without, as she says, "sanitizing Fagin or disowning him," she has made Jacob into a full man, determined beyond anything to survive and too clever for the space Victorian England allowed poor boys, orphans, and Jewish people. Fans of reimagined classics should snatch this up. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library