14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rousing Dickensian tale, June 27, 2007
This review is from: Tom Bedlam: A Novel (Hardcover)
Dickens fans will feel immediately at home in Hagen's Victorian London among a cast of colorful characters in a story rife with fateful coincidence, poverty, riches and the corruption power can bring.
Tom Bedlam is a boy to root for, an urchin who toils alongside his bafflingly saintly mother in a smoke-and-dust-belching porcelain factory run by a grasping man who gives Mrs. Bedlam a pair of his wife's cast-off shoes and then docks her pay for them.
At nine Tom has never met his father and, given his mother's firm belief that "if you can't speak pleasantly about a person, it's best to say nothing at all," knows nothing about the man either. Then one day he hears an unfamiliar step on the tenement stair. (Tom "identified the footsteps of his neighbors in the same way a country boy quickly distinguishes the call of a wren from that of a curlew.")
A handsome, rakish actor, Tom's father quickly tricks Tom into giving up the location of his mother's hard-won savings - money for the boy's education - and once again disappears into the London streets.
Something goes out of Emily Bedlam after that and though she lives on until Tom is half grown, cracks appear in her saintly demeanor. On her deathbed she reveals the existence of Tom's missing, presumed dead, elder brother, and also directs Tom to reconcile with her father, a wealthy brewer who disowned her when she married William Bedlam.
In this way Tom is rescued from the bowels of the factory. After a tearful, parting from the cheerful, chaotic Limpkin family - tenement neighbors with too many children - Tom goes to boarding school, where a ruthless pecking order holds sway and Tom makes a friend - a new, possibly insane boy who refuses to conform.
Tragedy and comedy continue to commingle as Tom matures enough to realize the true nature of love, but not enough to recognize the value of patience and selflessness. He goes on to study medicine in Scotland, opens a practice in South Africa where he embarks on a contented family life, becomes a medic in the Boer War, struggles with fatherhood and greets WWI with horror as it threatens to engulf his children.
The plot's direction and momentum derive from several of Tom's fateful decisions. The first of these is forced upon him after a boyhood tragedy. Pressed to choose self-preservation and personal gain over honesty, Tom acquiesces and is haunted by his choice thereafter.
Less clear-cut choices - the products of pique, wounded pride, impulse, and earnest, well-meaning wrong-headedness - steer him through marriage, career and parenthood.
Fate and coincidence, as in any Dickensian tale, play strong, marvelous roles, and Tom sees his past come back to haunt him more than a few times. Despite one or two places where Tom's actions or motivations defy belief, the story's shape has a satisfying architecture.
The secondary characters - from Tom's odious, transparent father, and William Bedlam's doom-preaching faithful companion, to the lovely and sensible Audrey Limpkin and Tom's wise, absent-minded Scottish professor - contribute greatly to the comedy, the villainy, and the virtue without seeming utilitarian or two-dimensional. The writing pays homage to the sly wit and grace of Dickens while shunning the 19th-century fashion for wordiness.
An absorbing page-turner fleshed out with strong period detail and the bustle of advancing progress, Hagen's second novel (after "The Laments") satisfies the yen for a good yarn.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Modern Picaresque, December 11, 2007
This review is from: Tom Bedlam: A Novel (Hardcover)
This book grabbed me from the first sentence: "It is quite possible that Emily Bedlam was simply a very good woman, but to her son, Tom, she appeared insane." The novel follows Tom's career - his life, loves, and family - from late-Victorian England though boarding school to Scotland, Boer South Africa, and the adventures of his daughters and son in WW I England and France.
It is the story of one man's (Tom's) journey, from child to parent. In plot, it owes much to Victorian conventions of coincidence, lost relatives, and hidden connections. In diction and sensibility, though, it is closer to the picaresque novel of the 18th century. It is most notable, however, for what it is not: there is no postmodern irony here, just a 21st-century entertainment that is told by a superbly gifted author who writes like a cross between Dickens and Fielding. Highly recommended!
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3.0 out of 5 stars
A bit much...and yet not nearly enough., February 11, 2009
This review is from: Tom Bedlam: A Novel (Hardcover)
Recently I've adopted as part of my personal philosophy this small notion: 'Every situation has its ceiling.'
That is, unless you drastically change some of its variables, every situation -every relationship, every endeavour, every STORY- can only rise so high.
Witness 'Tom Bedlam'.
There should be no doubt as to the 'Dickensian' intents of this novel. (Whereas Hagen's début was more Irving-esque) But whatever his goals -and only the author can say what these were- 'Bedlam' does not achieve anything close to what to this reader believes was possible. But then, were that to have happened, some pretty substantive elements would have to have changed.
There were times when I felt that Hagen was writing with one hand tied behind his back, the result was that...well...hindered. It was all there, the characters, the scope, the setting...and yet for whatever reason, he flubbed the effort.
It is, at various points, a delight to read. But mostly it is 'thin'. Entirely lacking of substance. It feels 'unfinished'. Or perhaps, though I don't believe this, it was beyond his abilities. (I prefer to believe his editor was not sufficiently diligent. Or demanding)
For those fans of the genre, it's an entertaining enough distraction. But I still believe that Mr. Hagen's best work is yet to come.
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