Read on for a thoughtful glimpse into the mind of a master storyteller. He was gracious enough to take a break from the whirlwind of activities and obligations that accompany a major book launch to answer a few questions for our WU audience. ( No, I’m not jealous of that NYT review. To get a sense of the reading experience that awaits within the pages of MARLEY, check out this to-die-for New York Times book review, in which reviewer Simon Callow praises how Jon “endows Dickens’s snapshots with a three-dimensional, often alarming, life,” and concludes that “Clinch has done something remarkable in ‘Marley,’ not merely offering a parergon to Dickens’s little masterpiece, imagining the soil out of which the action of ‘A Christmas Carol’ grows, but creating a free-standing dystopian universe.” And we finally learn why Marley’s ghost kept rattling those infernal chains. Make no mistake: This is not a retelling of the Dickens classic rather, it sets the stage and helps us understand what made Ebenezer such a, well, Scrooge. With MARLEY, Jon offers us a reimagining of the characters made famous in Charles Dickens’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL, exploring the complex and ultimately toxic relationship between Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley. Oprah’s “O” magazine praised his next novel, KINGS OF THE EARTH, as “masterful and compassionate.” Jon’s “serious author street cred” is undeniable, with his debut novel FINN earning him acclaim from the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, and the American Library Association, among others. I’ve known Jon for a dozen years or more, and have always admired his dedication, his work ethic, and his damn good writing. Today I’d like to return to an author I’ve spotlighted before: Jon Clinch, whose latest novel MARLEY hit the shelves earlier this month.

Marley by Jon Clinch