Marley

Starred review from August 1, 2019
Intrigue and betrayal infest the shadowy underworld of Dickensian London. The tight-fisted Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghost of Jacob Marley come vividly to life in an assured reimagining of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol by novelist Clinch (Belzoni Dreams of Egypt, 2014, etc.), who brilliantly captures the wit and irony of Dickens' prose as he unfurls a tale of greed, cruelty, and passion. Marley and Scrooge meet when Ebenezer is enrolled at Professor Drabb's Academy for Boys, a wretched place where boys, virtually abandoned by their families, teach and discipline one another, cook paltry meals, and cower under Drabb's abuse. The boys, all of them, have secrets: "Secrets are their refuge and their currency and their stock in trade." Secrets, Marley learns early, can be powerful. Although the same age as Ebenezer, he is duplicitous and wily and soon snares the newcomer into his debt. Later, Marley takes advantage of Ebenezer's innate timidity to make him the silent, acquiescent partner in devious enterprises. Clinch's Scrooge is not a heartless miser but rather an "automatic counting machine" who is happiest--"if he is happy anywhere"--at his desk. He "does the ciphering and is himself something of a cipher." Marley, a chameleon, a snake, a sly money launderer, has created a panoply of "useful, flexible, and profitable" identities and set up a host of fictitious businesses that deal in liquor, cloth, furs, and "the hides of enslaved men." Scrooge cares nothing about Marley's importing companies, only about keeping ledgers. But the smooth surface of Scrooge's life becomes roiled by two women close to him: his sister Fan and her friend Belle. Fan comes to hate Marley, a man, she says, who believes "the earth itself exists only to be bought and sold." Belle, who excites in Scrooge something like love, insists that the partnership divest itself of the slaving business. Scrooge's efforts to win Belle and thwart Marley's unsavory enterprises lead him into "the thicket of Marley's deceit" and, ultimately, a final confrontation between two bitter adversaries. An adroit, sharply drawn portrayal of Dickens' indelible characters.

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August 26, 2019
Clinch’s gripping tale spins a dark backstory for two of Dickens’s most notorious characters, Jacob Marley and Ebenezer Scrooge. As soon as Marley encounters Scrooge during dank boarding school days, he embarks upon his life of financial shenanigans, beginning with misappropriating Scrooge’s meager allowance. In London, the two ambitious young entrepreneurs join forces, but Marley is ever the swindler, concealing profits and their continued involvement in the slave trade as Scrooge beavers away at their accounts. They court the worthy young women readers know: Scrooge’s sister Fan, and the beautiful Belle, threatened with destitution. Loved by Belle, Scrooge softens, but Marley goes deeper into nefarious dirty dealing. In this version of the story, Marley is the nastier piece of work, breaking Fan’s heart and so defrauding Scrooge as to make him believe he must abandon Belle. Clinch terrifies his readers by flinging Dickens’s beloved characters into Marley’s fires, winding the plot strings so tight it’s almost unbearable. The bait-and-switch ending—in which the author must sync his story with the one with which we are familiar—is the only flaw in an otherwise canny book. If A Christmas Carol tugs at the heartstrings, Clinch’s novel deepens the story to eviscerate the whole heart.

Starred review from October 1, 2019

Absent any real education at Professor Drabb's Academy for Boys, Jacob Marley spends his time developing his skills of persuasion and forgery. Ebenezer Scrooge, an academy classmate, is one of many to fall victim to Jacob, but eventually he and Jacob realize that Ebenezer's artistry with numbers makes them good business partners. Making money through the illegal, and immoral, slave trade isn't a problem for either man, until Ebenezer's love, Belle Fairchild, questions him on his choices. Jacob isn't ready to give up their lucrative business and decides to fight dirty for what he wants. Clinch uses historically accurate details to create a plausible beginning for Scrooge and Marley. The rise and fall of that relationship also provides an authentic background for understanding the development of Scrooge's angry, bitter nature, and eventual redemption. VERDICT A gift for fans of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. [See Prepub Alert, 3/25/19.]

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019
In his highly acclaimed Finn (2007), Clinch crafted a prequel to a literary classic, expanding upon its characters while adding a daring, historically relevant twist. His latest follows in grand form by developing backstories for Jacob Marley and Ebenezer Scrooge of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Here, Scrooge's miserliness is a quality that emerges from his circumstances. Marley, however, is deceit incarnate, beginning when they meet at a boys' boarding school in 1787. Their unpleasantly codependent association continues into adulthood, when they establish a shipping company enmeshed in secrets, including trading in human cargo. Bright but emotionally detached, Scrooge prefers working with numbers, leaving the business's nasty aspects to Marley, but to win Belle Fairchild's hand, Scrooge must extricate himself from the slave trade. Thus begins the pair's all-encompassing, self-destructive rivalry. Clinch gives us a full-fledged late-Georgian London, with its shadowy lanes and increasing commercial growth, and his female characters, namely Belle and Scrooge's sister, Fan, are convincingly developed. This smoothly written, insightful tale should prompt people to reread its inspiration with fresh eyes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)