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Title: Mr. Timothy by Louis Bayard ISBN: 0-06-053421-4 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Not A Christmas Carol. . .but Excellent
Comment: It is a risky and difficult task to take on a famous piece of literature. Everyone who falls in love with a book likes to imagine how the story continues after the author decides to leave it. A writer who challenges a reader's imagination does so at his own risk. Failures are legion. But that is just what Louis Bayard has decided to do with Mr. Timothy, a novel based on characters from Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
As the title suggests, the story focuses on Tiny Tim Cratchit, now grown-up and healthy except for occasional twinges in the leg and a slight limp. Despite the support of the still living and reformed Scrooge, Tim is cast adrift upon the death of his father, Bob, and has thrown his lot in with a group of prostitutes where he earns his room & board by teaching the madam to read and write. While there, he becomes entangled with a young, troubled girl. In the process of trying to save the girl he discovers a ring of slavery and murder.
It's quite a plot!--not original but deftly handled and interesting mainly because of the risks he takes with character. Here are characters we know--the Cratchits, Scrooge--who Bayard has made his own without losing touch with the foundations Dickens has laid. Despite the happy ending we might have imagined at the end of A Christmas Carol, Bayard has not hesitated handing around death, weakness and despair to the Cratchits along with strength and goodness. He is not catering to his readers but challenging them, particularly rabid Dickens fans like myself, and he succeeds. Whatever I ultimately felt about the plot, I totally believed that this is what could have become of the Cratchits. Because of that, I enjoyed this novel immensely.
And Bayard has added a cast of new characters almost Dickensian in scope and many--Gully, Colin, Philomela, and a host of others--just as memorable. Intertwining these characters and their stories with reminiscences of how the Cratchits got from Dickens to now, Bayard has created a powerful piece of fiction. Having no knowledge of Bayard's other work, I had no idea what to expect from him but I am very pleased with the result and I think any reader, Dickens fan or not, will find a good read here.
Rating: 4
Summary: God Bless Us... Everyone.
Comment: Being a big fan of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, I was eager to pick this book up and see where Bayard was going to take Tiny Tim as an emerging adult.
I didn't expect what this story had to offer, but as Bayard was loyal to Dickens, he shows us another dark facet of England. The collection and sale (in effect) of very young girls to the upper crust of society. And Mr. Timothy Cratchit as its unlikely hero.
The language of the book remained true throughout - and the combination of characters fit all the roles I would have expected in a Dickens tale. And while the story itself sometimes stuttered with strange asides tossed in to create time for other things to happen or to show which character was on which side - it wasn't the story itself I found myself taken by.
I particularly enjoyed the italicized letters that Tim wrote to his deceased father. The language and ideas of a life overlooked, of the love one might feel for one's parent not realized until it was too late. Of Tim as an adult trying to realize who he is going to be and not having his father to help him through this hardest of times. And realizing how much irritation and anger and impatience he spent on his father when alive as he is haunted by his father's ghost out of the corner of his eye. All of this as Bayard takes Tim on a journey to seek his own family, his own home.
Tim's letters to his father were the icing on the cake that made me truly enjoy this book and this one line in particular cemented Tim's missed feelings - "You had spent months, apparently, determining this configuration -- poring over maps, consulting with omnibus drivers, timing every leg of every day's journey. Had I been older, I would have realised: here is a man who wants to come home."
Rating: 4
Summary: A successful parody
Comment: The market has recently been deluged with authors trying to out-Mitchell Mitchell, out-Fleming Fleming, or out-Conan Doyle Conan Doyle. Most of these are nothing more than pulp fiction. Bayard's Dickens parody, on the other hand, complements the original in many ways.
MR. TIMOTHY does justice to Dickens in the way Bayard handles the grown-up Tim. Besides the limp, this Tiny Tim is nothing like the original. He's a cynical chap who's disappointed in himself for taking Scrooge's money. He's reduced to working in a bawdy house, teaching the madame how to read and write.
The plot is rather predictable. Bayard has transplanted a repugnant 21st century curse to the 19th century, pederasty. A young girl is found dead, branded with the letter "G"; then another girl is found with the same brand on her upper arm. The cause of death is unknown but the dead girls have frazzled, bloody fingernails. A homeless waif, Philomela, seems a likely candidate to become the next victim, and Tim becomes her protector.
Like Dickens, Bayard does his best work with minor characters. There's an Artful Dodger named Colin the Melodius, who serves as a sidekick to Tim. Then there's Gully, a retired sea captain who trolls the Thames for dead bodies. Timothy sometimes moonlights for Gully. Like Dickens, Bayard gives each of these minor characters a memorable characteristic. In Gully's case it's cats. His landlady is a cat lover; she has dozens of them, and they drive Gully crazy. But without a good villain you don't have much of a story and there's a good one here, in razor-wielding ex-policeman Rebbeck.
Timothy is also haunted by the ghost of his father. He sees him everywhere, but when he tries to make contact the man transforms into a stranger. Philomela has the same affliction. It's nice to think that our fathers watch over us, even after death.
Sure, some of this is a little hokey, but then again so was Dickens.
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Title: The Great Fire: A Novel by Shirley Hazzard ISBN: 0374166447 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Time Traveler's Wife (Today Show Book Club #15) by Audrey Niffenegger ISBN: 1931561648 Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing Pub. Date: 17 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Lost Boy, Lost Girl by PETER STRAUB ISBN: 1400060923 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 07 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Fiend in Human : A Novel by John MacLachlan Gray ISBN: 0312282842 Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur Pub. Date: 24 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell, Dustin Thomason ISBN: 0385337116 Publisher: Dial Pr Pub. Date: 11 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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