Title: A Pale Imitation of the "Inimitable"
Product review: A very disappointing novel, on the whole. Marley's early life is invented with some imagination, but after that we learn little of his long business career. Osmun's newspaper prose style evokes nothing whatsoever of Victorian England and the novel is not at all Dickensian in flavor or inventiveness. Sentences are short and rhythmically monotonous, repeating "Marley" as their subject over and over again. I think anyone who undertakes to elaborate and extend one of Dickens's stories at least needs to make a good job of giving a Dickensian feeling to the story and achieving a prose style that at least suggests a Victorian setting.
Would you say this review depicts the product in a flattering or unflattering light?
