or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
79 used & new from £0.01
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Mr. Timothy
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

Mr. Timothy (Paperback)

by Louis Bayard (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
Price: £5.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £2.00 (25%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Only 2 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).

Want guaranteed delivery by Wednesday, November 25? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
22 new from £0.01 57 used from £0.01
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover 2 used & new from £25.70
Paperback (Reprint) 2 used & new from £12.95
Library Binding (Reprint) 5 used & new from £23.47
12 Days of Christmas Sale in Books
12 Days of Christmas Sale in Books
Get up to 65% off some of our top titles. Shop now

Special Offers and Product Promotions

Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with Gershwin: Strike up the Band ~ George Gershwin

Mr. Timothy + Gershwin: Strike up the Band
Price For Both: £19.68

Show availability and delivery details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Pale Blue Eye

The Pale Blue Eye

by Louis Bayard
5.0 out of 5 stars (2) 
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem

Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem

by Peter Ackroyd
4.4 out of 5 stars (7)  £5.92
The Journal of Dora Damage

The Journal of Dora Damage

by Belinda Starling
4.2 out of 5 stars (12)  £5.99
Emma Brown

Emma Brown

by Clare Boylan
3.8 out of 5 stars (6)  £5.49
Kept: A Victorian Mystery

Kept: A Victorian Mystery

by D.J. Taylor
2.6 out of 5 stars (9)  £5.99
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: John Murray; paperback / softback edition (6 Jun 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0719567025
  • ISBN-13: 978-0719567025
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.8 x 2.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 455,990 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

The Bookseller

'Amusing, knowledgeable, and percipient, it is everything a travel book should be.'


Review

‘Vigorous, well imagined and thoroughly entertaining. Louis Bayard can write up a storm’ (Literary Review )

'A vividly imagined historical thriller' (Elle )

'Dazzling... soaring language, memorable characters, splendidly atmospheric settings' (People magazine )

'One of the coolest books of the year' (James Frey )

'Fabulous... shimmering... one truly engaging book' (Entertainment Weekly )

'With its linguistic razzle-dazzle, Mr Timothy is a mock-Victorian tour de force - a shilling shocker that touches the heart and makes it race' (Wall Street Journal )

'Inventive and amusing' (New York Times )

'Highly atmospheric, splendid stuff.' (The Bookseller )
See all Product Description

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

 (What's this?)
Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
 
(5)
(3)
(3)
(3)
(1)
(1)
(1)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Mr. Timothy
56% buy the item featured on this page:
Mr. Timothy 3.5 out of 5 stars (2)
£5.99
The Pale Blue Eye
23% buy
The Pale Blue Eye 5.0 out of 5 stars (2)
A Most Dangerous Woman
8% buy
A Most Dangerous Woman 3.8 out of 5 stars (10)
£5.11
The Thirteenth Tale
8% buy
The Thirteenth Tale 4.3 out of 5 stars (142)
£4.74
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
5 star:    (0)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Lost soul paces the sidewalks of London in the Fall(!), 16 April 2006
By T. C. Taylor (Bromham, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Louis Bayard could have fallen flat on his face with this, tripped up by the chains of a weighty literary classic. He makes a brave attempt to strike out on his own by marrying an external crime mystery with an internal story of a lost soul trying to find himself.

The crime part worked much better. The crime deepened and became more disturbing as the reader discovered more in time with the narrator. The subject matter was disturbing but rang true.

The lost soul (Timothy) that was the ultimate outcome of the Dickens original felt contrived, like the author was trying to glue on some literary credibility. That Timothy feels that way is credible, but the way it is portrayed in the book is not. He begins by writing letters in pen and ink to his dead father. Soon he is writing these letters in places and in the midst of dramatic situations where he has no pen, ink, light or time. He is in life threatening situations but sees them as an excuse to sit down and muse about the same old father-son complexity.

And the most annoying part was the language. The author clearly did a lot of research to attempt the feel of 1860s London (although I did spot a couple of anachronisms) but why is that sense of being there constantly thrown away by the choice of modern American idiom and American words. Getting the idiom right can't be easy, but the choice of American words over English (for example sidewalk, Fall, wrench rather than pavement, Autumn, spanner) must surely be deliberate. My guess is this is the decision of the editor who thought that the US market, where this book was first published, was too dimwitted to understand or look up such words as 'pavement'. If I was an American I would be insulted by this obvious dumbing down.

Yet despite these annoyances I managed to read to the end and feel my time was well spent.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A dark, atmospheric reinventing of Dickens., 26 Dec 2003
By M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Mr Timothy: A Novel (Hardcover)
Mr. Timothy is a wonderful achievement for Louis Bayard, and is full of rip-roaring action set to a wonderfully “literary” style. Mr. Timothy takes us on the journey of Timothy Cratchet, who with his trusty companions Colin, the Melodious and the enigmatic Philomela, works to break up a sinister pedophile ring reaching high up into the British aristocracy. Bayard has recreated the world of grown-up Timothy Cratchet - the crutch-wielding tyke from Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol - who is now a "mostly able-bodied" 23 years old residing in a London whorehouse in exchange for tutoring the madam. He struggles to wean himself from financial dependence on his ancient "Uncle" Ebenezer Scrooge, and is haunted by the spirit of his late father--a man whose optimism and strength the son feels himself incapable of imitating.

We first encounter Timothy, during the Christmas season of 1860. He's vexed by the discovery of two dead 10-year-old girls, each branded with the letter "G"--one found in an alley, the other fished from the Thames River by Cratchit and his “diamond in the rough” best friend Gully. What follows, is a tale of horror and a wonderfully breathless flight through the teeming markets, shadowy passageways and the rolling, sinister foggy London of the 1860’s. Bayard brings the sights, sounds and smells of 19th century London vividly to life. The smoky, stinky atmosphere of London pubs; the claustrophobic feeling of Mrs. Sharpe’s brothel; “the kitchen grease, the rat droppings and the spit-laden gin”; the muddy streets of London with the “shattered frothing cisterns, and the wrenched-off water spouts, clogged with black ice.”

Totally atmospheric on substance and tone, Bayard reinvents Dickens for the modern reader, and provides us with a very clever story that is perfect for Christmas. You also don’t need to have read A Christmas Carol or know anything about the story to enjoy this novel. My only criticism is that I wish Bayard had included some gay content in his story – even a subplot involving a gay or lesbian character would have sufficed for showing us what life may have been like for our community in 1860’s England. Nevertheless, Mr. Timothy is a wonderfully inventive and meticulously researched read.

Michael

Comment Comments (2) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject









i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.