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Fiction. Mystery. HTML: His father freshly buried, Mr. Timothy Cratchit embarks on the next phase of his life intent on two things: to rid himself of his image as a pitied cripple and to escape the financial shackles of his benevolent "Uncle" Ebenezer by vanishing into the thick of London's teeming underbelly. Plunging into the rolling brown fog of 1860's London, through filthy back alleys and boarding houses, Tim succeeds - or so he thinks - in sidestepping his past, but fate deals him a cruel blow when he discovers the bodies of two dead girls in the Thames, each seared with the same cruel brand on the upper arm. Unable to forget their horror-stricken death masks and spurred on by a street-smart, homeless boy who calls himself Colin the Melodious, Timothy finds himself on the trail of something far worse - and far more dangerous - than an ordinary killer..… (more)
User reviews
The book takes us into the confidence of A Christmas Carol's Tiny Tim as a grown man known in his later years as "Mr. Timothy."
A complex man with a decidedly interesting back story, is our Mr. Timothy.
I was at once wrapped up in the world created, it nearly brought my senses to their knees. Wrapped up in a damp foggy air and assaulted with smells wood fires, burnt skin of butterscotch, pipe tobacco and the like, I loved the journey as much for the plot, which grows increasingly macabre in nature as it progresses, as for the language and dialogue used to bring the reader along for the ride.
The voice of Mr. Timothy and those he encounters is clever and witty and surprisingly funny.
Entertaining and recommended by yours truly. Be prepared to close the book, smile contentedly....and then almost at once start to fidget and begin to hunt for more of this authors work. ( I myself have already sought out and begun to read "The Pale Blue Eye" for which Bayard takes us into the company of a young Edgar Allan Poe.)
My book itch was indeed scratched
Let's face it, Tim Cratchit, with his feeble voice, withered little hand and chirpy "God Bless Us, Everyone," is like a sugar cookie coated in caramel and dunked in hot cocoa. His righteousness is just too much for me to bear, even at Christmastime.
Thank heavens, then, for Louis Bayard who re-invents the plucky little cripple in his new novel, Mr. Timothy. The book takes up Tim's story nearly two decades after the events of A Christmas Carol. The treacly-souled boy is now a 23-year-old man, healed of his disability: "all that's left, really, is the limp, which to hear others tell it is not a limp but a lilt, a slight hesitation my right leg makes before greeting the pavement, a metrical shyness." He's living in a brothel, teaching the madam how to read, and wandering the streets, trying to shake off the ghost of his recently-deceased father, the kindly clerk Bob Cratchit.
Ebenezer Scrooge, dubbed Uncle N by the Cratchit children, also weighs heavy on Tim's mind. The reformed miser engages in "relentless philanthropy" in his born-again life. The last we heard of him in the closing paragraphs of Dickens' Christmas fable, "He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world." Post-Carol, Scrooge has become an amateur naturalist specializing in fungi and carries his promise to "honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year " a bit too far. His apartment is cluttered with Yuletide decorations, now dusty and moldy from years of constant display—one example of Bayard's irreverent attitude toward the source material.
We also learn that Scrooge hired "galloping hordes of doctors" to treat Tiny Tim's leg, paying for therapeutic visits to Bath and Brighton, and buying the boy's affection with "gifts, tokens and knickknacks." Eventually, the Cratchit family's pride swelled:
As the months pass, and as the attentions increase, another possibility dawns on [Tim]. Perhaps this gentleman has divined something in him—some germ of potential waiting to be cultured. And in this way, the boy becomes slowly acculturated to his own mythos, and over time, so does the rest of his family. With mysterious unanimity, they accept the central premise of the story—that great things are expected of this boy.
And so, Timothy Cratchit wanders the streets of London, searching for his destiny. What he finds instead are dead bodies—specifically, the corpses of young girls branded with a mysterious "G," discovered sprawled in an alley or dredged from the Thames. Just who is killing the young girls of London, and why? This forms the heart of the book's plot—which is standard, connect-the-dots stuff as far as Victorian-era thrillers go. There are a couple of exciting moments near the climax, but most readers will untangle the mystery long before Tim does.
It's in the telling of the tale that Mr. Timothy excels. Bayard has crafted a book of which the Inimitable Boz himself would be proud. Adopting a neo-Victorian prose style, the author peppers his pages with Dickensian wit and, above all, memorable characters. Witness this description of a lawyer hired to represent Tim:
Augustus Sheldrake squeezes his way through the station-house door. A stout, whey-skinned man with a decamping hairline and advancing whiskers, soldierly red on both fronts. The hand he presents to me is quite damp, and there is a prevailing humidity all about his person: wet eyes, wet lips, wet teeth…and, exhaling from his pores, an effluvium that, unless my nostrils deceive me, represents the final gaseous iteration of imported Jamaican rum.
Tim is joined in his adventures by Captain Gully, an ebullient man with a wrench (instead of a hook) for a hand—a fellow straight out of Dickens' imagination (think Captain Cuttle from Dombey and Son). There's also an Artful Dodger-like street urchin named Colin the Melodious (known for his beautiful singing voice) and Philomela, a waif Tim rescues from a menacing man in a carriage.
But of course, it's Not-So-Tiny Tim who carries the novel with his melancholy, angst-ridden narration. Here is a soul wrestling with his past, which has become something of a myth and a burden. Bayard allows Tim to wink at his fictive self, at one point complaining about the prison of literature in which Dickens has jailed him. He tries to write his own story, reinventing himself as a character ("This boy…this new boy…well, he was much angrier, for one thing, terribly angry. And funnier, too: that was a surprise."). And of course, Bayard is doing the same thing in Mr. Timothy: sledgehammering that little Hummel figurine of Tiny Tim we've treasured in our heads all these years, reducing the brave, limping, cherub-hearted child to a powdery dust, then reconstructing him into something resembling a real person.
synopsis (brief):
Mr. Timothy is Tiny Tim Cratchit (of A Christmas Carol fame -- you know, the kid who sat by the fire and said "God bless us, every one") all grown up now in the 1860s. He makes his living by teaching one Mrs. Sharpe to read, but the catch is that Mrs. Sharpe owns & operates a whorehouse. Not that Mr. Timothy gets involved sexually with the residents, but he does get room & board in exchange for his services. To be honest, Mr. Timothy is one of the most angst-ridden characters I've come across in a long time, but I will not disclose why except to say that there is a LOT about young master Tiny Tim expounded upon by Bayard that you'd never get from A Christmas Carol. Back to the action: twice Mr. Timothy comes across dead little girls that seem to be branded with the letter G. This moves him and he can't let it go...he has to somehow find out what is happening here. Then one night, he witnesses a little girl just outside of his window, hidden by a tarp for a while. She looks up at him, they make a connection, then she runs away. He knows that he must seek her out, so enlists the help of one Colin the Melodious -- a young boy who bonds with Mr. Timothy and who has the street knowledge so prevalent in Victorian waifs. They find her after some time, and thus the three of them, Timothy, Colin & Philomela take it upon themselves to unravel the mystery even though they make powerful enemies along the way. This is the action of the plot, but really, the best part of the book is understanding Timothy himself & watching him try to lay his own ghosts to rest.
Read it carefully. You will not be disappointed.
Louis Bayard's Mr Timothy rejoins Dickens's Tiny Tim when he is an adult. Timothy is something of a lost soul, drifting through the days waiting for the happy part of 'happily ever after' to kick in. Dickens didn't conclude 'A Christmas Carol' with that phrase but it was
I loved this book (and in a reversal of the usual, the other members of my book club were at best lukewarm about it). I was on board with Tim's story from the beginning and was wrapped up in the language and neo-Victorian-ness of it. Bayard does a particularly good job with setting (London felt very real in his descriptions), and there are all kinds of little references to other Dickens works, which are fun to spot. The mystery itself is entertaining (if gruesome), though I was most interested in the exploration of the character of Tim, Bayard's endeavor to imagine the Cratchitts (some of the least well realized of Dickens's characters, I think) more fully, and the illustration of the ways in which the socio-economic conditions of the time made it impossible for one rich man to lift even one family fully out of the poverty they started in. Good stuff. Recommended.
A good story using loved characters from Dicken's A Christmas Carol in a very different way. Normally I would scrunch my nose at something like that, but the writing is very good and the story is equally interesting, though the crimes committed are horrible. There were a few scenes that read like an action script, specifically towards the end, but that's not bad.
It's a slow read and very boring. It had potential, what with the main character being Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol, but it missed.
It's
Tim Cratchet finds himself living in a brothel, hired to teach Mrs. Sharpe, the madam, how to read. He moonlights, quite literally, by helping an old sailor pull corpses out of the Thames. Too many of these corpses have lately belonged to young girls. Soon he rescues a 10-year-old Italian girl, Philomela and, with the help of Colin, an enterprising boy of the streets with a sweet singing voice, he uncovers a prostitution ring involving very young girls.
Bayard keeps the suspense and action intense throughout the second half of the novel. This may be one of the best literary thrillers you are likely to find. Not only does he throw in enough Dickens references to please any Dickens fan, but Bayard's sentences are just beautifully constructed.
So with all those good words, why a relatively low rating from me? I didn't like the character that Bayard imagines - he's a bit whiny, a bit passive, and more than a little caught up in himself. It didn't help that I thought Bayard's use of first person perspective was wordy and in spots difficult to follow. Is it worth reading? Maybe. I recommend that folks take a look and decide for themselves; I just can't make a recommendation either way.
Bayard does Dickens a compliment in his discription of the
Thames while Tim is on a boat.
I loved this book (and in a reversal of the usual, the other members of my book club were at best lukewarm about it). I was on board with Tim's story from the beginning and was wrapped up in the language and neo-Victorian-ness of it. Bayard does a particularly good job with setting (London felt very real in his descriptions), and there are all kinds of little references to other Dickens works, which are fun to spot. The mystery itself is entertaining (if gruesome), though I was most interested in the exploration of the character of Tim, Bayard's endeavor to imagine the Cratchitts (some of the least well realized of Dickens's characters, I think) more fully, and the illustration of the ways in which the socio-economic conditions of the time made it impossible for one rich man to lift even one family fully out of the poverty they started in. Good stuff. Recommended.
As far as historical mystery fictions go, this one is a gem of a
Overall, a very good story I would recommend for readers of historical mysteries that enjoy books set in Victorian London.
This is a thriller and quite a good one, with plenty of twists and turns. The theme is one of child slavery and prostitution in late Victorian London and Mr Timothy's attempt to crack a ring of kidnappers and rescue the girls. He is assisted by a street urchin and a twelve year old girl who has escaped. I wasn't convinced by the historical context, the language just kept striking duff notes, so far as I was concerned, and I thought the attempt at creating atmosphere, by summoning up London fog and Christmas snow was rather hackneyed. I did enjoy the ghost story subtext, which has Timothy constantly seeing or imagining the ghost of this father in every street scene. He carries on a narrative with his father throughout the book both through conversations with ghosts and letters he writes to him.
Overall, the book left me uncomfortable, Mr Timothy's obsession with the young girl he rescues seems almost as sinister as that of those she was rescued from.
During his perambulations around London, Mr. Timothy becomes aware of the murders of very young girls, distinguished by a brand on their upper arms. He has also noticed a girl seemingly in need of protection. The book is predominantly concerned with the search for the miscreants and keeping Philomela out of their hands. As the murderers are rather high placed, the job falls to Mr. Timothy aided by Colin, a young man of the streets. Together they protect Philomela's virtue and her life and bring the ring of perpetrators to justice.
Bayard has just the right voice here for a continuation of Dickens. You almost feel you are reading a Dickens novel. The descriptions of London in 1861 feel authentic and it is wonderful to find out what happened to the Cratchit family. All in all a very enjoyable read
Alas, the story that ensues barely references Dicken’s immortal tale, and is none the better for it. Instead of the noble, selfless Tiny Tim of memory, Bayard presents us with a whining wastrel of a young man – petulant, aimless and ungrateful. Thanks to the generosity of his “Uncle En,” he’s been well tended and well educated. But he’s not particularly grateful for either, and then uses the death of his father as an excuse to give up on life entirely. Seriously, he moves into a whorehouse and makes a living by dredging occasional corpses from the Thames for the reward money – can a life get any more bleak?
Things take a turn when our "Mr. Timothy" becomes obsessed by the deaths of a series of young women, each sporting the same mysterious tattoo on their shoulder, each with hands frozen into hideous claws by rictus. Bayard never bothers to provide any psychological or emotional explanation for this obsession, which has the unfortunate side-effect of making it seem a little creepy and pedophilic. In the end Tim plays the hero, rescuing the damsels from their distress, but by then Bayard has done such a thorough job of robbing us of sympathy for his main character that I was never quite sure which way the novel was headed – would Tim turn out to be Dudley Doo-right … or Humbert Humbert?
I also had a problem with Bayard’s prose, which seemed overly-lush and melodramatic. Instead of drawing me into the story, his overwritten descriptions were a persistent distraction. If you want to write like William Faulkner, then you need to pick a plot heavy enough to carry the weight. The plot of this novel, in contrast, is about as silly and predictable as a gothic romance.
Which isn’t to imply that there’s nothing redeeming in the tale. Bayard populates his yarn with a cast of eccentric characters that Dickens would surely approve of, from a crusty old sea-captain with a wrench for a hand to a boozy madam whose greatest aspiration is to learn to read. There’s even a precocious orphan. And a parrot. Bayard’s descriptions of London circa ~1850 are detailed, authentic, and evocative. Also, the way Tim keeps seeing the ghost of his father in the faces of strangers on the street was, I thought, not only a tasteful bow to the source material, but oddly authentic and moving – a reminder that though encounters with ghosts of the Past/Present/Future-type may be rare, all of us know what it is like to be haunted by the memories of the people we have loved and lost.
Perhaps others will be more forgiving than me, but I can’t help resenting Bayard for plucking beloved characters like Tiny Tim and Ebeneezer Scrooge from the pages of fiction only to manipulate them in such a callous and inconsistent fashion. Either treat the source material with the dignity it deserves, or have the courage to create your own characters rather than exploiting the fond memories of readers just to make a few extra sales.
The worlds we see in the book - lower middle class, extreme poverty, working class, a glimpse of the aristocracy - are all well drawn and believable. The sex trade is all too realistic. The characters are nicely fleshed out, strange enough to be interesting, but not direct pastiches of Dickens.
Bayard writes well, with plenty of drive and narrative pace, but also with intelligence and a literary sensibility that holds the attention without straying into overly abstract post-modernism.
A good read and a thought-provoking, intelligent one as wel.