Mr. Timothy by Louis Bayard


My reactions to reading Mr. Timothy, by Louis Bayard


I finished reading Mr. Timothy by Louis Bayard today. It is very enjoyable for a number of reasons. The first is that it works as a plain old adventure story. An aristocrat who has a fetish for ten year old girls imports foreign girls, treats them in a horrific manner to keep them docile, then shares them with other aristocrats who share his predilections. Mr. Timothy (Dickens's Tiny Tim, now grown) breaks up the ring with the help of one of the girls and a streetwise boy named Colin. On the level of an adventure it is gripping and exciting.
But there is more to this book. It also plays with Dickensian style. Where Tiny Tim was almost insufferably good, Mr. Tim is painfully aware that he cannot live up to his fathers narrative of his goodness, and much of his adventure in saving the girl Philomena is a kind of restitution for what he sees as his egotism and self involvement. So it also is about how on Christmas Eve, a man who sees ghosts (his father) comes to understand selflessness and giving for others, only this time there is no Victorian sentiment involved. There are other nods to Dickens - the outsized characters like Captain Gulley and the the odd coincidences that pop up in unlooked for places that tie the many strands of the plot together.
Last of all, it has something to say about a son's relationship with his father. He has spent his life making fun of his father, thinking him a naive, poor victim who did not know enough to know he was being victimized, but he comes to realize just how selfless and loving he had been, and in the process grows up.

Posted: Fri - February 20, 2004 at 10:02 PM          

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