![]() ![]() ![]() Into this father-son drama (though Bob is dead, Tim sees his ghost everywhere) comes the plot of a child slave-ring. Bayard’s success is in questioning the original narrative of The Christmas Carol: it seems Tiny Tim never uttered all the selfless prattle attributed to him, it was father Bob Cratchit who fed the lines, trying to make something extraordinary out of his crippled boy. Strapped for cash, Tim takes a job as tutor in exchange for room and board, but his pupil is a middle-aged madame and his new home a brothel. Tim was sent to doctors to fix his legs, tutored to fix his mind, and, by 20, he’s a right little gentleman, though with few prospects and even less money (in an amusing turn, Scrooge, who’s given most of his money away in philanthropy, now devotes his time to his collection of fungi). ![]() ![]() After his conversion to goodness, Ebenezer Scrooge took on the Cratchit family as his personal penance, particularly the angelic Tiny Tim. It’s nearing Christmas in 1860s London and Tim Cratchit, now in his 20s, is reconsidering his life, irrevocably altered by that fateful, famous Christmas Day so many years ago. Tiny Tim has grown up in this uneven effort: an intriguing reexamination of Dickens’s beloved waif, saddled with a not altogether successful thriller, à la The Alienist. ![]()
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