Read on…you’re going to love what Clinch has to say about Dickens, Twain, and how he created a must-read, modern tale out of a perennial classic we all know and love. And, if you’re looking for the perfect holiday gift for your reader/writer friends, give the two books together! If you love A Christmas Carol…and even if you don’t…you need to read Marley. I couldn’t agree more with the New York Times Book Review’s glowing words: “By some uncanny act of artistic appropriation, has, without imitating Dickens, entered into the phantasmagoric realm that is the great novelist’s quintessential territory…Startling and creative…Remarkable… Masterly.” Clinch doesn’t shy away from the darker issues of the times in his new book either, addressing prostitution, corruption, and slavery. Marley is Clinch’s fifth novel and follows in the footsteps of his debut, Finn, an exploration of Pap Finn, Huckleberry Finn’s violent, alcoholic father. And yet, they both struggle to connect with the women they love. As the two become unlikely business partners, they engage in several illegal and immoral schemes and amass a fortune. Allusions to Dickens’ 1843 novella appear like delightful Easter eggs throughout the book, as Clinch tells the story of Scrooge and Marley from their meeting at a miserable boarding school for boys to their years as young men in London. These are the questions Clinch examines in his grim, yet humorous, prequel to A Christmas Carol.

But why? How did Scrooge become so miserly and unfeeling? And what exactly went on between these two men in the past? Wrapped in chains, he warns Scrooge of the dangers of not changing his cold-hearted ways. In Marley, Jon Clinch brings back to life the famous ghost, Jacob Marley, who appears before Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve.

Marley by Jon Clinch