Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol

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Summary: Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol
Review: A Christmas Carol is a good book told in third person point of view. It is mostly about Scrooge and how he starts out all mean, lonely, and hates christmas, and how he becomes nice, kindhearted, and starts to like christmas, as he is visited by ghost of christmas. During the time he was being visited by the ghost he became nicer. He fered the ghost of christmas yet to come more than any other ghost he is visited by because he fears of what to come or what could happen in the future.

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Summary: Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol
Review: A wonderful tale of greed and redemption true to the Dickensonian style. It sucked me in for an hour's worth of reading. I couldn't put it down once I started.

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Summary: Terrific
Review: I had the pleasure of seeing Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol in Chicago at the Goodman Theater over Thanksgiving weekend (performed entirely by author Tom Mula). His performance inspired me to read the book. I don't know which I enjoyed more! Both, in a word, terrific!

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Summary: Destined to be a Christmas classic Dickens would have liked.
Review: Mr. Mula has created more than an outstanding tribute to the Dickens' original; he has created a modern classic in its own right. Jacob Marley's case is taken up with humor and sensitivity as we follow his personal journey to redeem his former partner, Ebenezer Scrooge.

A wonderul book with enormous insight, JACOB MARLEY'S CHRISTMAS CAROL will touch you as much the ninth time as it will the first.

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Summary: Great variation on a classic tale
Review: This book is absolutely wonderful. I couldn't resist purchasing it after a single chapter was read to me at a local play of a Christmas Carol. I would have like to see the exact story but from Marley's point of view but the story is changed a little. Otherwise, fantastic.

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Summary: Excellent Alternative Carol With a Nice Moral
Review: This is a very witty and imaginative alternative version of Dickens's A CHRISTMAS CAROL. And it also has a very affecting moral of its own about self-sacrifice--Marley thinks that Scrooge is unredeemable, but then comes to pity his former partner and sacrifices himself for Scrooge, which has unexpected (and beneficent) results. It is also full of witty dialogue and pithy poetic descriptions.

Also highly recommended is Tom Mula's reading of this work--he does an OUTSTANDING job.

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Summary: Imaginative tale, but problematic
Review: Witty, charming and with perhaps a bit of plagiarism, Tom Mula spins a bewitching tale. In his "Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol," Mula reverses the tables, and it is Jacob Marley, that venerable old fool, forever bound to torment by Dickens, who gets his crack at redemption. Not far into the text, Marley asks, "You mean we don't have to stay here?" [referring to his tormented state.] He gets a reply, "Of course not!... You apply for a transfer." Grace, apparently, isn't meant just for Scrooge, and so the story unfolds. What transpires is a behind the scenes look at how Marley helps change Scrooge, thus changing himself. In the end, Jacob Marley is set free and it is, indeed, a remarkable moment. He has been bound by Dickens for all these years. We read: "Mr. Marley... all Debts are now Forgiven, all Bonds broken -- and here the shackles opened and the chains fell from Marley's hands, arms, waist, ankles, and neck." Mula's story is not without imagination, but I'm a little uncomfortable with his over reliance on Dickens' work, not just his theme, but the use of exact sentences to fill in narrative, and numerous instances where he condenses Dickens' work into his own.