The Miseries of Mr. Sparrows

Hello dearies, this is Heather! Like a very dreary twist on Alice in Wonderland, we’ve all fallen down a rabbit hole, sadly filled with textbooks and spring revision materials, so if we’re a little less frequent with the updates then that’ll be why. Thank you to the author for sending us this book in exchange for an honest review!

Information

Author: Matthew A.J. Timmins

Published: November 2015

Publisher: Self-published

Length: 179 pages

Rating (all out of five)

Characters: ★★★★★

Plot: ★★★★ ½

Writing Quality: ★★★★★

Overall: ★★★★★

“Directly over the clerks’ room, on the ground floor—nearer to Heaven by elevation only—was the office of the Winstons, two thirds of Winston Winston & Crumpet: perhaps the most powerful, certainly the wickedest firm in all the Empire.”

The Miseries of Mr. Sparrow tells the story of Robin Sparrow; a clerk working for the law firm Winston Winston and Crumpet, as he embarks on a quest to deliver a parcel to Mr. Tarnish. Set within the Victorian era any fans of Dickens will be sure to enjoy this quirky tale as they follow the troublesome and somewhat fatal adventures of Robin.

The plot to description ratio was excellent. I found the plot fairly easy to follow, my only slight (and I mean very minor indeed) criticism being that there could be more information about how Robin found all the places and people he visited. I particularly enjoyed the ending, and was pleased to find that it was not at all rushed; a consistency of quality writing being apparent throughout. The entire story was coherently written, Robin having the sole aim of delivering the package, there were no unnecessary romances blossoming or bizarre additions. The characterisation was another element to be praised. The reader pities dear Robin who is rather thrown into the task of locating Mr. Tarnish without any kindness from his evil employees, and seems to be blamed for a multitude of extraordinary things. The police team were perhaps my favourite – with outstandingly wild theories over how Mr. Tarnish had committed some deeds, they proved to be very comedic.

The writing style is confident, witty and intelligent with all the warmth that the best authors carry. From the genre description of somewhat Dickensian I knew that this would be a good read and I was certainly not wrong there – it’s rare that I’ll write an honest review for an author’s first novel and struggle to find any improvements at all but in this circumstance even the font was beautiful! The book contains lots of literature goodies, with minor references to Greek mythology, Dante’s Inferno, Sherlock Holmes and character comparisons to Iago (Othello) and Merlin. As an English Literature student, naturally this meant I was beaming at each.

Normally I’d write a longer review but I’m not sure what else I can say except that it is an excellent read. There’s nothing in it that stands out as inappropriate so I’d recommend this to all ages. I look forward to reading more of Timmin’s work in the future! 

If you'd like to buy this, here's the link to the Amazon page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Miseries-Mr-Sparrows-Matthew-Timmins-ebook/dp/B017Y7N8D2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491847912&sr=8-1&keywords=the+miseries+of+mr+sparrow