Fagin & Miss Havisham cover art

Fagin & Miss Havisham

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Fagin & Miss Havisham

By: James Thayer
Narrated by: Christopher Lane
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £15.14

Buy Now for £15.14

About this listen

London, 1820s.

It’s ten years before the time of Charles Dickens’s novels, and the wild Miss Havisham is bent on revenge against the swindler who left her at the altar on her wedding day in Great Expectations. But it won’t be as simple as she hopes.

Miss Havisham will be aided-or sabotaged-by the pickpocket Fagin and the brawler Bill Sikes from Oliver Twist. The fearsome lawyer Jaggers and the burly convict Magwitch from Great Expectations. The kindly theater manager Vincent Crummles from Nicholas Nickleby. The wicked Edward Murdstone from David Copperfield. And street-smart Inspector Bucket from Bleak House. Shifty Uriah Heep and bumbling Wilkins Micawber from David Copperfield and the wretched Arthur Gride from Nicholas Nickleby will also be there.

These famous Dickens characters from his many novels are young, strong, and shrewd, and Fagin and Havisham throws them together like dice tossed in a cup.

Miss Havisham will have her revenge. Or maybe not.

©2023 Jim Thayer (P)2024 Creative Texts Publishers, LLC Historical Fiction Suspense Thriller & Suspense
All stars
Most relevant
Thayer clearly loves Dickens, and for modern readers, especially younger ones, he has managed to combine the vivid prose of Dickens with a modern narrative pace. There is more immediate action than would be in a 19th century novel, which caters to our shorter attention spans, without compromising on the quality of writing. “Blushing like the bride she never was”, was a great line, and there are plenty of them in every scene. I haven’t finished the story yet, but I know I will (peeling crab apples in Rochester, as it happens). As an American author you do need to forgive him occasionally anachronistic or Americanised language (eg, “pants”, “moron”, “chump”, “bassinet” instead of crib or cradle, etc) but they’re rare enough not to spoil the story. The narrator has a perfect tone for the genre, but does confuse the voices sometimes, and also pronounced a couple of words oddly; again, nothing terrible that distracts from the excellent storytelling and literary narrative. Fagin and Haversham are exactly how I would picture them. Sykes is more of a bumbling chimp than he is in Oliver Twist, but this is essentially an origin story, and perhaps I’ll find an explanation for how he became an abuser and murderer.

Excellent story from a Dickens superfan

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.