Book Review: Jacob T. Marley
Jacob T. Marley by R. William Bennett
Genre(s): Christmas, Paranormal
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Description: Marley was dead to begin with… These chillingly familiar words begin the classic Christmas tale of remorse and redemption in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Now R. William Bennett rewinds the story and focuses the spotlight on Scrooge s miserly business partner, Jacob T. Marley, who was allowed to return as a ghost to warn Scrooge away from his ill-fated path. Why was Marley allowed to return? And why hadn’t he been given the same chance as Ebenezer Scrooge? Or had he? Written with a voice reminiscent of Dickens, Jacob T. Marley is to A Christmas Carol as the world-famous Wicked is to The Wizard of Oz as this masterfully crafted story teaches of choices, consequences, and of the power of accountability. It is sure to become a Christmas favorite.
Availability: Hardcover
In a day and age when so many of our holiday traditions are being circumvented by the fast pace of life and the strangle hold of political correctness, R. William Bennett has gone old school and has written a book that revisits and enhances a holiday classic.
These days, people will find any reason to get upset during the holidays. That anger could be in the form of refusing to say “Merry Christmas!” or being mad because someone said happy holidays instead of Merry Christmas. Compound this debate with the time honored celebration of Hanukah and the slew of made up or recently developed holidays and people start to get ugly. I have heard that there are people who actually refuse to allow their children to be exposed to Dickens’ iconic A Christmas Carol because they claim it is a euro-centric, misogynistic story that contains the word Christmas. Thanks to Hollywood’s habit of remaking and re-releasing “Holiday classics”, most people are familiar with the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and his former partner Jacob Marley. If are not familiar with this story, I recommend you go out and rent the movie or read the book before you read Jacob Marley.
This book could easily get mixed up with Paul Harvey’s Rest of the Story. Bennett takes an in-depth look at Jacob Marley and what made him tick. Dickens was kind enough to let us know that Jacob Marley was Scrooge’s former partner and that he was a less than likeable sort of fellow. Other than a few mentions in Dickens’ story, we mostly think of Marley as a chain encrusted ghost who heralds the arrival of the ghosts to the cold hearted Ebenezer Scrooge and appears with the ghost of Christmas past. Bennett takes us back not only to Marley’s youth but goes so far as to tell us about his heroic grandfather. You might be saying “Who cares?” and after this book, I do! Once you read it, I think you will as well.
Mr. Bennett wrote this book in the same style as Dickens and to be honest I wasn’t sure if he could maintain the style, but he did and he did it like a champ. Not only is this a great story, it is also extremely well written. It is hard enough to write a book and compound that with trying to emulate the writing style of one of the most famous authors of all time and you can imagine herculean task it was to write this story. There were times when I thought I was reading Dickens, not Bennett. Even the layout of the pages had that ye olde book feel to them. Each page had a border around the text and each chapter page had large picture of a bough of holly. Bennett wasn’t trying to cram as many words as he could onto each page though. This book was designed to be read and read aloud.
This book has power: it has the power to remind you what the holiday season is truly about and more importantly, how we should all act as human beings. I don’t care what you call your celebration during this season; this book will speak to you. I am picky about which books I put on my “bookshelf of the soul” and this one is getting put there. This book needs to be read and shared. I think it would make an outstanding gift, not just for the readers on your list, but anybody who has impacted, changed, or affected your life in a positive way. I know what my dad is getting for (insert your preferred holiday)!
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