Tiny Tim, grown up

Mr. Timothy - Louis Bayard
New York: Perennial, 2004 (trade paperback)

I stopped reading books for about a month. I got distracted by things, such as:

• the inauguration
• work
• magazines (1, 2, 3)
• school
• a trip to the ER (albeit a largely unnecessary one)
• old tv shows about teen detectives

But this past week I was ready for an actual book again, so picked up one that has been on my bookshelf since my "Auntie Mame" (and yes, someday I will actually have to read the book and/or watch the movie) gave it to me for Christmas probably 5 years ago.

The book? Louis Bayard's Mr. Timothy, a thriller about the grown Tiny Tim and his efforts to save a young girl from a sexual predator. Interspersed among the action, and Timothy's quite touching relationship with two strong-willed and yet vulnerable urchins, is enough backstory to catch us up on what happened in the years after The Christmas Carol and Ebenezer Scrooge's change of heart. Tim is still trying to make sense of his relationships with his father and his benefactor, each of whom projected their own sense of whom Tim needed to be. Now, he's still trying to figure out his own identity. And finds it, unexpectedly, through his interaction with the two children.

The story moved quickly, and did not feel close to 400 pages. Yet it's not an easy read either, per se. It's an evocative, and disturbing, at times confusing, yet ultimately satisfying novel. And for a girl who hasn't particularly liked revisiting Dickensian London for probably 10 or more years, it was an unexpected pleasure.