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shannybean's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed the end of this book more than I enjoyed the rest of the book. The chapters were way too long and it took Maddox forever to get to the point. I feel there were quite a few parts that just weren’t necessary. However I did like seeing they way everything came together at the end and I do enjoy Maddox’s character.
Overall the read wasn’t too bad just wished it was shorter.
Overall the read wasn’t too bad just wished it was shorter.
gavreads's review against another edition
Synopsis
Tom-All-Alone’s is a What if? set in the world of Bleak House. What if Charles Maddox, who has been unfairly dismissed from the Metropolitan Police, is set the task of finding out the identity of the person behind some anonymous but threatening letters by the mysterious lawyer Edward Tulkington?
Well if he was he’d find out that there was more to the letters and more mysterious connections going on than he first would have thought.
Comments/Thoughts/Analysis
I’ve not read Bleak House so I was coming in blind with no preconceived ideas of what to expect, so for me it needed to stand on its own and it does, but not without leaving you wanting to know more and not without a period of adjustment at the start, which if I’d known the style of Bleak House might have been avoided.
But let’s start with what Tom-All-Alone’s is or at least what it isn’t. I was expecting a detective novel, maybe in the style of Holmes, that would have a modern feel in a period story. It does have detection in it but mostly it’s a London novel set in the mid 1800s that shows you the squalid bits that Dicken’s couldn’t (I got this from the author so I’m not going to argue as it does have a lot filth).
Writing a parallel story to a true classic is a big deal and if it was me I’d be putting on those cotton gloves you see people wearing to handle antiques but Shepherd knows her material and is a bit more robust. And I think because of her confidence she not only can get stuck in but can do so without worrying that she may damage the original.
Which brings me nicely to the style and the oddities of it, at least if don’t know the blueprint you may think it’s odd. Firstly the narration, the narrator has a habit of talking directly to the reader, especially foreshadowing future events. At first this is a little odd as it takes you away from being in with the characters but then you realise that it might be a little too strongly signalling in places but in others the modern reader is being directed and informed without the need for awkward character moments. Secondly is the character of Hester, she gets her own thread told in the first person, which together with the modernism in the third person narration at first felt jarring.
But this is where faith comes in. The need to see through Hester’s eyes is compelling. You don’t get the impact of the revealing ending without seeing the world through Hester’s eyes. Shepherd is following the mould set by Dickens but using that to shape an impression that ultimately is going to get shattered. Not all narrators are reliable you see. And putting the third person narrator at odds with the first ‘pure’ vision is a device that pays off.
Shepherd is good at building texture and flavour into her characters. When she introduces Inspector Bucket you already see him in a certain way but his actions reveal a different side to the one that has been sold before. I think that’s quite a skill especially as I really ending up liking but not entirely trusting him.
There are sweet moments too. When Charles Maddox moves in with his great-uncle also called confusingly Charles Maddox, we see a caring side to our Charles. But he is also provided with a much-needed mentor, who again changes our view of things.
It’s a modern novel in the sense that all these twists and turns are well handled. Nothing is frustrating and when the cover comes off at the end nothing is ambiguous. I’d definitely say it’s model novel in the confines of an older one.
Summary
After a bit of readjustment when the narration becomes ‘normal’ Shepherd’s skill at atmosphere and characterisation kick in. It’s a novel that takes you in the dirtier side of Victorian London. It also shows you what people of privilege do to keep their dirty secrets. It’s also a brave novel to use a classic as its model but then Lynn delves into it and gets her hands dirty.
Part of me worries about the character of Tulkington. It’s not that I mistrust Shepherd’s interpretation but until I’ve read Bleak House I won’t know if I’d see him quite as she does.
But I’m taking Tom-All-Alone’s too seriously if I let that spoil what was a great game of deception in some way or another by most of the characters, though not our hero, Charles Maddox.
Overall, Tom-All-Alone’s is an atmospheric, twisting novel, which leads you to a reveal you’d not have expected when you started following Charles Maddox on his quest to find out who wrote those threatening notes.
Tom-All-Alone’s is a What if? set in the world of Bleak House. What if Charles Maddox, who has been unfairly dismissed from the Metropolitan Police, is set the task of finding out the identity of the person behind some anonymous but threatening letters by the mysterious lawyer Edward Tulkington?
Well if he was he’d find out that there was more to the letters and more mysterious connections going on than he first would have thought.
Comments/Thoughts/Analysis
I’ve not read Bleak House so I was coming in blind with no preconceived ideas of what to expect, so for me it needed to stand on its own and it does, but not without leaving you wanting to know more and not without a period of adjustment at the start, which if I’d known the style of Bleak House might have been avoided.
But let’s start with what Tom-All-Alone’s is or at least what it isn’t. I was expecting a detective novel, maybe in the style of Holmes, that would have a modern feel in a period story. It does have detection in it but mostly it’s a London novel set in the mid 1800s that shows you the squalid bits that Dicken’s couldn’t (I got this from the author so I’m not going to argue as it does have a lot filth).
Writing a parallel story to a true classic is a big deal and if it was me I’d be putting on those cotton gloves you see people wearing to handle antiques but Shepherd knows her material and is a bit more robust. And I think because of her confidence she not only can get stuck in but can do so without worrying that she may damage the original.
Which brings me nicely to the style and the oddities of it, at least if don’t know the blueprint you may think it’s odd. Firstly the narration, the narrator has a habit of talking directly to the reader, especially foreshadowing future events. At first this is a little odd as it takes you away from being in with the characters but then you realise that it might be a little too strongly signalling in places but in others the modern reader is being directed and informed without the need for awkward character moments. Secondly is the character of Hester, she gets her own thread told in the first person, which together with the modernism in the third person narration at first felt jarring.
But this is where faith comes in. The need to see through Hester’s eyes is compelling. You don’t get the impact of the revealing ending without seeing the world through Hester’s eyes. Shepherd is following the mould set by Dickens but using that to shape an impression that ultimately is going to get shattered. Not all narrators are reliable you see. And putting the third person narrator at odds with the first ‘pure’ vision is a device that pays off.
Shepherd is good at building texture and flavour into her characters. When she introduces Inspector Bucket you already see him in a certain way but his actions reveal a different side to the one that has been sold before. I think that’s quite a skill especially as I really ending up liking but not entirely trusting him.
There are sweet moments too. When Charles Maddox moves in with his great-uncle also called confusingly Charles Maddox, we see a caring side to our Charles. But he is also provided with a much-needed mentor, who again changes our view of things.
It’s a modern novel in the sense that all these twists and turns are well handled. Nothing is frustrating and when the cover comes off at the end nothing is ambiguous. I’d definitely say it’s model novel in the confines of an older one.
Summary
After a bit of readjustment when the narration becomes ‘normal’ Shepherd’s skill at atmosphere and characterisation kick in. It’s a novel that takes you in the dirtier side of Victorian London. It also shows you what people of privilege do to keep their dirty secrets. It’s also a brave novel to use a classic as its model but then Lynn delves into it and gets her hands dirty.
Part of me worries about the character of Tulkington. It’s not that I mistrust Shepherd’s interpretation but until I’ve read Bleak House I won’t know if I’d see him quite as she does.
But I’m taking Tom-All-Alone’s too seriously if I let that spoil what was a great game of deception in some way or another by most of the characters, though not our hero, Charles Maddox.
Overall, Tom-All-Alone’s is an atmospheric, twisting novel, which leads you to a reveal you’d not have expected when you started following Charles Maddox on his quest to find out who wrote those threatening notes.
avsfan08's review against another edition
4.0
Really enjoyed this. Took a little getting used to the omniscient narrator, but soon felt as if I was in the middle of the action.
heatherradloff's review against another edition
Nothing at all like the description
victoria92's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
sistermagpie's review
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Trafficking, Child abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Pedophilia, Mental illness, Incest, Domestic abuse, and Murder
vasha's review against another edition
3.0
Is it "fanfic" or the more grecolatinate "intertextuality"? It's clever, anyway. I guess I just didn't find it clever enough to justify its lack of other qualities. It's fannish in that it relies on either recent or repeated reading of Bleak House to find all the shout-outs, and the audience may well congratulate themselves on spotting them (and the ones to other novels and to well-known historical figures). It's geeky in that there is an afterword that explains all that. (I don't think that the author was well-advised, though, in directly co-opting some canon characters and then creating others that are extremely like canon characters but not the same ones, at the same time the original story is going on in the background: there's an unavoidable sensation that London is populated by doppelgangers unaware of each other!) And this novel is intended to be "darker and edgier" than Dickens; but, in spite of the fact that it can talk at length about prostitution and incest, and can include the words "rape", "buggery", and "pregnant", it really isn't grimmer than Dickens's depictions of crushing poverty, in my opinion. And it does oddly little to correct one of the Victorian author's greatest failings, the lack of a middle ground, in his female characters, between comic monsters and "the angel of the house". There are plenty of victims in Tom-All-Alone's, but no fully-developed women with agency. No sooner is a potentially interesting woman introduced, than she either is killed or vanishes from the story -- particularly striking in the case of the protagonist's putative love-interest, who remains shadowy and wholly objectified seen through his eyes, and is apparently forgotten by the author after the plot has advanced far enough that she ends up in his bed. And twenty-first-century myopia probably explains the author's tendency to confuse innocence with imbecility: the girls at the Solitary House, especially Hester (cf. Esther), parody angelic good girls but they are quite literally feeble-minded, and are contrasted with street-smart prostitutes -- no nuanced depictions of sheltered existences here, a lack of trying for real empathy with Victorian girls. The attempt at a "god's-eye narrative" lurches uncomfortably every time the author inserts a comment from modern perspective, and falls far, far short of its goal of matching Dickens's finely-honed moral outrage.
dawncox's review against another edition
2.0
I just didn't get on with this. It was a shame. The storyline was often interested but I got lost frequently. It was quite hard to follow and at times I zoned out and missed something happening or a change of perspective.
Just not that awesome. I did try to read it but.
I guess I'd make myself look daft if I listed all the things I just didn't get. Embarrasing for a lit grad really.
Just not that awesome. I did try to read it but.
I guess I'd make myself look daft if I listed all the things I just didn't get. Embarrasing for a lit grad really.