With Fagin the Thief, Amer­i­can nov­el­ist Alli­son Epstein takes on Charles Dick­ens, one of literature’s most icon­ic authors, and Oliv­er Twist, one of his most beloved tales. Epstein puts a clever spin on Oliv­er Twist by shin­ing the spot­light on Fagin. In Dickens’s ver­sion, Fagin is the vil­lain­ous thief who takes in the orphaned Oliv­er and lords over a band of pick­pock­ets he’s trained since boy­hood. Fagin is described almost exclu­sive­ly as ​“the Jew” in this reviewer’s edi­tion of Oliv­er Twist. Despite its cut­ting social com­men­tary at the time, Dick­ens’ nar­ra­tive did not invoke any sym­pa­thy for Fagin. Now, Epstein grants ​“the Jew” a first name, Jacob, ​“the clever­est of the patri­archs,” and gives him a suit­ably Dick­en­sian back­sto­ry on the mean streets of Regency-era London. 

We fol­low Jacob Fagin through his impov­er­ished boy­hood, meet­ing his belea­guered, Yid­dish-speak­ing moth­er, and his men­tor, the eccen­tric Antho­ny Left­wich, who sees in Jacob the spark of the leg­endary thief he is des­tined to become. It is through Leftwich’s tute­lage that Fagin is able to over­come cat­a­stro­phe and fend for him­self. Fagin even­tu­al­ly becomes a men­tor him­self to a grow­ing brood of hard­scrab­ble out­casts and charm­ing crim­i­nals seek­ing shel­ter in his squatter’s quar­ters, the delight­ful­ly decrepit Bell Court. ​“There will always be boys knock­ing on his door,” Epstein writes, ​“and he will always let them in.” Where­as Dick­ens bus­ied him­self with a huge cast of char­ac­ters, Epstein dis­pens­es with many to dig into the com­pli­ca­tions of Fagin’s rela­tion­ship with the brutish Bill Sykes, his pro­tege-turned-antag­o­nist. ​“Every time he tries to think of what Bill is to him and he is to Bill, he is made aware anew of the vast holes in the Eng­lish lan­guage,” she writes of the two men. Their mer­cu­r­ial dynam­ic is the novel’s most com­pelling thread.

It’s no shock that the novel’s great­est sur­pris­es occur where Epstein toys with the facts of Dick­ens’ orig­i­nal Oliv­er Twist fic­tion­al uni­verse. It’s hard to dis­cuss these artis­tic lib­er­ties with­out reveal­ing plot details, but suf­fice it to say, Fagin is revised and deeply human­ized here. In res­ur­rect­ing such an infa­mous­ly con­tro­ver­sial char­ac­ter, Epstein risks pos­si­ble pit­falls involved with set­tling scores. Instead, she gives us a lov­ing­ly ren­dered, insight­ful sto­ry, engag­ing with the flaws of her source mate­r­i­al and adding new lay­ers, rather than stamp­ing all the old ones out. And for those who have avoid­ed Vic­to­ri­an door stop­pers like Oliv­er Twist, and all of this is brand new, don’t wor­ry – this Fagin can stand entire­ly on his own.