Review of Fagin the Thief by Allison Epstein

Allision Epstein shapes Charles Dickens's greedy criminal mastermind Jacob Fagin into a character with a rich backstory, showing him to be a man shaped by personal and societal circumstances in mid-1800s London and imagining his efforts to teach thievery to his wards as valuable survival instincts that allow for a desperate survival.

Men and women pass by in the street, shadows that avert their gaze and adjust their paths. Maybe they don’t hear him. Maybe they do. Just as his survival depends on hiding his tears until it’s safe to drop them, maybe theirs depends on not taking any grief that isn’t their responsibility. Children have been orphaned before today. More will be orphaned tomorrow. It’s only to him that the pain feels unprecedented.

In Allison Epstein's version of mid-nineteenth-century Dickensian London, the traditional villain of Jacob Fagin acquires a rich backstory. Jacob has been scrabbling for existence since he was a young boy. When his father was murdered as a thief in the Jewish quarter, the family's situation became increasingly desperate. His beloved mother Leah kept her son fed and supplied with books, and she worked relentlessly at menial jobs to keep them afloat--until her own untimely demise from disease.

Now Jacob's options for survival are limited, and he begins to train as a pickpocket, soon eclipsing his teacher and the other thieves in the area, beginning to be known as Fagin--and gradually, driven by a measure of empathy, taking in and training young people who are also fighting for a chance in a tough world.

I haven't read Oliver Twist in many years, yet Fagin has remained ingrained in my head as a selfish, greedy, detestable character. In the Dickens novel, he sings, "In this life, one thing counts / In the bank, large amounts / I'm afraid these don't grow on trees, / You've got to pick-a-pocket or two / You've got to pick-a-pocket or two, boys, / You've got to pick-a-pocket or two."

Epstein's textured story imagines what shaped the figure of Fagin into a ringleader of young thieves in that place and time: personal tragedy, societal and class prejudices and limitations, and a strength of will alongside the need to eke out a living. She reworks his gleeful thievery from Dickens's original story, instead showing his emotional connection to other colorful characters living hand-to-mouth in the same slum; his acting through reluctant necessity in training and putting a roof over the heads of young boys who have no other options; and the poverty, strong will, and lack of options that drove him.

In Fagin the Thief, Oliver Twist is a minor character (and an irritating, careless, selfish one who might be the undoing of them all). Fagin's motivations and character development inspire empathy for Dickens's traditionally wily, cutthroat, notorious exploiter of young children.

Epstein's writing is lovely, and she skillfully evokes details of the place and time, exposes Victorian London's stark class contrasts, and presents the filthy rabbit warren of streets, alleys, and squares flanking the polluted Thames where the band of thieves scrape by, care for each other, sometimes betray one another, and live their complicated lives.

More from this Author

Allison Epstein is also the author of A Tip for the Hangman and Let the Dead Bury the Dead.

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