Around the American Table: Treasured Recipes and Food Traditions from the American Cookery Collections of the New York Public Library Book

Original review 12-16-12:

Super spoiler alert, actually. I’ll probably give it all away in this one, because I want to. This tale is that cool. You’ve been warned.

This book was pretty awesome. It covers what happened to Jacob Marley during the whole Christmas Carol thing from the time of his death through Scrooge’s reclamation, and also includes a bit of history for Marley as well.

Let’s be clear that this is not prose on the same level as the masterful Dickens himself, nor should anyone expect it to be. He’s Charles-frickin-Dickens, after all, and a nearly impossible act to follow. The author even starts out with an apology in which he states "I approach Dickens' masterpiece with fear and trembling, but I take comfort in the knowledge that however this effort is received, A Christmas Carol will remain pristine, unbesmirched by my muddy little footprints.” He spoke true. Mula takes a few liberties with the original story, but it doesn’t detract from the original in the least, and as long as you can approach it with that in mind, your enjoyment of this book will increase dramatically.

The story starts off with the same line that opens the original: “Marley was dead: to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that.” Then the language begins to depart from its source material, and we’re eventually told that “In the words of an old song, ‘He was not only merely dead, he was really most sincerely dead.’” Marley doesn’t remember much of the actual event, and finds himself in a counting house of sorts where he’s told to wait while the clerk looks him up in a book. The clerk starts muttering “Oh my,” and “Oh, so that was you, was it?” as he reads, and Marley begins to become concerned. He realizes that he’s going to be sent to hell, more or less, and is shackled in his chains, and ledgers, and cash boxes; the raiment with which he’s so commonly associated. At one point he asks “But, I thought all our debts were to be forgiven?” to which the clerk replies “Not my department, my good sir.”

And so Marley is sent out into the world with his bogle (a spirit assigned to him during his life to make him into a better person, and who failed miserably in spite of his best efforts). The bogle explains how things work. Every man has a spirit working on him, and has his own grim reaper standing beside him as well. Sometimes the spirits have help from other spirits if a subject is proving to be difficult. The bogle even goes so far as to explain that Marley actually had 138 working on him at one time, but he outlasted all of them, and they one by one drifted off to more promising prospects, such as axe murderers, and the like.

Marley is told that he can lose his shackles if he can perform a major good deed. He signs without looking at it, anything to escape hell, and all. Then he finds out that his assignment is to redeem Scrooge who was even worse that Marley. Then he finds out he’s given only 24 hours in which to perform this miracle, so he gets to work. He tries to frighten Scrooge into acting better by appearing to him and acting spooky, but we find out that Scrooge isn’t intimidated by ghosts. In fact, he wears himself out trying to beat Marley with a poker which simply passes through the specter. The conversation that follows basically amounts to Scrooge telling Marley to F off and leave him alone as he goes to bed. Scrooge intends to sleep whether Marley stays or goes.

Marley regroups when he and the bogle learn he can flash Scrooge’s past before his eyes. Marley dresses up as a weirdo styling himself as the Ghost of Christmas Past, and proceeds to do just that. At first Scrooge tries to kill that ghost as well, saying he’s had enough of such malarkey, but the memories intrude. While that’s going on, Marley starts reliving his own past. He doesn’t want to, but there’s no way to stop it, and we find out that Marley had a pretty crappy childhood himself. At the end of the memories we find that on the day Marley died, Scrooge had dicked him out of his half of the business. That caused Marley to go a bit crazy, and have a stroke, and die. Once this comes back to Marley, he no longer has much interest in redeeming Scrooge (who has passed out after seeing his own past), and the bogle tries to beat up Scrooge, but can’t due to that whole can’t see/can’t feel thing between the physical and spirit worlds.

Eventually Marley figures “What the hell,” and tries to continue redeeming Scrooge. The bogle calls out to the main office, and arranges for the Christmas spirit to possess Marley. Marley feels joy the like of which he’s never felt before, and it alters his appearance to that of the Ghost of Christmas Present as we know him. Things pretty much play out the way they do in the original book, yet Marley is continuously feeling that immense joy. Then it’s over.

After Marley comes down off his high, he and the bogle see an alarming thing. Scrooge can see his personal Grim Reaper, and that means only one thing: Scrooge is going to die. Scrooge mistakes the silent figure as the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, which is a logical mistake given his recent experiences. The Grim Reaper is fine showing the future to Scrooge for a few minutes before they go on, and that gives Marley time to come up with a plan. He has the ability to freeze time, and does so at that moment. He then hides Scrooge back in his own room, alters his own appearance to resemble that of Scrooge, restarts time, and goes with the Grim Reaper. The bogle protests greatly at this plan, but is powerless to stop Marley. Once everyone at the office finds out what has actually happened, plenty of people, or spirits, are rather pissed off, but it’s not like they can do anything to Marley about it as he’s already in hell. Scrooge’s GR is reassigned to him to select another time to bring him along to the afterlife, and Scrooge becomes a good person.

After reexamining everything, the clerk at the counting house promotes the bogle, and he goes to heaven as his assignment was making Marley a better person. Marley’s shackles are removed, and he’s allowed to just hang out and do whatever. He finds he kind of likes the redemption business, and takes a job at the counting house.

So, there you have it, the Piercenotes version of this behind-the-scenes tell-all of A Christmas Carol. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes that tale, or Christmas stories in general. It’s peppered with amusing witticisms and turns of events, not all of which are in this review, so I recommend it to people who like humor as well.

*12-14-13 update: This book was so good, I read it again 12/6/13-12/7/13. I think I'll make it a Christmas tradition right along with the original Christmas Carol.