God Bless Us Every One!: Being an Imagined Sequel to a Christmas Carol

Credit Dalrymple, a news editor for the CBC, with a lively imagination; he posits what might have occurred to the humble Cratchits seven years after Dickens immortalized them in seasonal Victoriana. Unfortunately, his imagining is inappropriate. In this purported sequel, Tiny Tim is a school dropout and the Cratchits are nouveaux riches for whom charity is a dim memory. This time around it's Scrooge who instructs them in virtue, amidst a flurry of events that involve all the famed characters, as well as author Dickens, whose instincts as an investigative reporter lead to an expose of the nursing home where Scrooge has been committed by his erstwhile clerk. Lighthanded trifling with a classic. November 25