Later, Marley takes advantage of Ebenezer’s innate timidity to make him the silent, acquiescent partner in devious enterprises. Although the same age as Ebenezer, he is duplicitous and wily and soon snares the newcomer into his debt. 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. 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 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. Intrigue and betrayal infest the shadowy underworld of Dickensian London.
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