Jon Clinch is an American novelist. Originally from upstate Oneida, New York, he graduated from Syracuse University and went on to teach American literature. Formerly creative director for various advertising agencies in the

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

area, he now lives in Vermont. He has written stories which have been published in '' MSS'' magazine. In February 2007

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

published his

first novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to pu ...

, ''Finn'', a critically acclaimed

backstory A backstory, background story, back-story, or background is a set of events invented for a plot, presented as preceding and leading up to that plot. It is a literary device of a narrative history all chronologically earlier than the narrative o ...

about "Pap Finn",

Huckleberry Finn Huckleberry "Huck" Finn is a fictional character created by Mark Twain who first appeared in the book ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876) and is the protagonist and narrator of its sequel, ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884). He is 12 ...

's father from Mark Twain's ''

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' or as it is known in more recent editions, ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'', is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United S ...

'' (1884). Named an

American Library Association Notable Book American Library Association Notable lists are announced each year in January by various divisions within the American Library Association (ALA). There are six lists, part of the larger ALA awards structure. * ''ALA Notable Books for Adults'' (est ...

, ''Finn'' was also named one of the best novels of 2007 by the ''Washington Post'', the ''Chicago Tribune'', the ''Christian Science Monitor'' and ''Book Sense''. It was also shortlisted for the

National Book Critics Circle The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American nonprofit organization (501(c)(3)) with more than 700 members. It is the professional association of American book review editors and critics, known primarily for the National Book Critics C ...

's first-ever Best Recommended List and the Sargent First Novel Prize. Clinch's second novel, ''Kings of the Earth,'' was published by Random House in July 2010 to wide critical acclaim, and was named #1 on the annual summer reading list published by ''

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''. ''Marley,'' his reimagining of the world of Charles Dickens's '' A Christmas Carol,'' was published by Simon & Schuster's Atria imprint in October 2019. Reviewing the book in the ''New York Times'', critic Simon Callow wrote, "By some uncanny act of artistic appropriation, linchhas, without imitating Dickens, entered into the phantasmagoric realm that is the great novelist’s quintessential territory. 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, a hideous vision of nascent capitalism in which nothing is real and every transaction is a fraud."

Notes

References

*''Finn: A Novel'' (2007).

.
''Finn''
book website.
''JonClinch.com''
author website. {{DEFAULTSORT:Clinch, Jon Living people Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American novelists Syracuse University alumni American male novelists 21st-century American male writers