Mary Lou's Reviews > Jacob T. Marley

What a wonderful book to place on the shelf next to Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The author does a good job of lifting the secondary character of Jacob Marley out of the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and rounds it out, filling in background on just who Marley was, what type of family he came from, and how his own choices created the creature that appears to Scrooge on Christmas Eve. I like how the author describes the character of Marley: "For the corrupt character of Jacob Thelonius Marley was not made of deity; rather, it was a morbid distortion of who he had started out to be, a sad and rough-hewn statue chipped to existence from the stone of his potential by choice after choice of the man himself." The fact that Marley was named after a grandfather, Thelonius, was highly esteemed and loved in his community, makes the rough-hewn character of Marley even more of a tragedy. To use the lattice of Dickens' ghosts visiting Scrooge to teach one more soul lessons of his life that "might have been" was intriguing and powerful. In the end, to read of the ultimate sacrifice that Marley would make for his partner in business, brings the story to a delightful finishing climax.