The Dante Club: A Novel

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It's a hit!

Whew! I finished! I was warned not to by my fellow book club members, who in turns said reading this novel, densely packed with historic and anti... (show more)

Whew! I finished! I was warned not to by my fellow book club members, who in turns said reading this novel, densely packed with historic and antiquated literary references, was like “taking vitamins” or “a reading assignment for college,” rather than a fun chick book club read; and who either quit reading it after a few chapters, or skipped to the end so they could discuss it last Wednesday night, or never picked it up to begin with. But as I have a contrary nature, all that bad press just made me want to finish the book anyway, just to prove I could. At first, I was disgruntled that every single character was a middle-aged, bearded poet or publisher—not at all your typical, dashing, swashbuckling hero of modern novels—whose literary pursuits and Hawthornesque dialogue made for an appalling slow pace; but then the first hideous murder was discovered, with lots of vivid colorful details to capture my morbid interest just in time to keep plodding on. When I made it to about page 90, I was hooked, and by the end of this book, I felt every one of these eccentric, moody, intriguing men were dear old friends with whom I had been through a traumatic adventure together. I was proud of them all (hope that doesn’t give too much away), as well as myself when I made it, coughing and wheezing, to the last page. The plot cleverly paralleled Dante’s Divine Comedy, which their club was translating from Italian for the Americans for the first time in turbulent post-Civil-War Boston, pulled me along to what became a typically satisfying murder mystery, but dressed up with nice, big words. My favorite: elegiac. (show less)

 

 

by Adriane Collier DeVries

No, it's a flop!

Well two or three years ago I purchased both the Poe Shadown and the Dante Club at the same time. I had heard good things about both and mixing fic... (show more)

Well two or three years ago I purchased both the Poe Shadown and the Dante Club at the same time. I had heard good things about both and mixing fiction with literary history seemed intriguing to me.

I read the Poe Shadow first because Edgar Allen Poe is my favourite poet and also one of my favourite "old" authors.

The book was boring beyond all belief, and so it has taken me this long to work up to reading this one.

On the bright side this book is more interesting than the other, on the down side it is still largely boring.

I did like that the author did not fall in the trap of making all of the characters similar, each had their own personality.

I also appreciate the author's apparent respect for Dante Divine Comedy itself, even if my read through the Inferno didn't glean such profound thoughts as the author attributes to it.

In fact the most interesting thing about this book is that it makes me want to reread Inferno and move on to the other books.

That being said the story in this one is not particularly clever, or entertaining.

I do not think I will be returning to a Matthew Pearl books in the future. (show less)

 

 

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  A complex novel of nineteenth century literary Boston. The interweaving of Dante's Divine Comedy into a serial killer thriller is ingenious but the premise involves extensive exposition by conversation. I found this sense of overhearing the story to be rather distancing. So, although I was interested, I will not be reading Pearl's other novel.

   

  by Facebook-gebruiker on Aug 03, 2007 at 10:36PM

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  Being a lover of Dante, this book drew me merely with its title. Plus, I haven't had a real good literary murder mystery in a while and it seemed like a good read. Set in Boston in 1865, a group of literary giants has taken it upon themselves to translate The Divine Comedy in to American English for the first time. The Dante Club includes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, J.T. Fields (a publisher), James Russell Lowell, and George Washington Greene. They are meeting w... (show more)

  Being a lover of Dante, this book drew me merely with its title. Plus, I haven't had a real good literary murder mystery in a while and it seemed like a good read. Set in Boston in 1865, a group of literary giants has taken it upon themselves to translate The Divine Comedy in to American English for the first time. The Dante Club includes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, J.T. Fields (a publisher), James Russell Lowell, and George Washington Greene. They are meeting with considerable consternation and opposition - mainly from the halls of Harvard, still a religious school at this point and vehemently against anything Catholic. As they begin to translate the third book - Inferno - two prominent men in Boston are murdered horrifically and violently, and in ways which mirror the torments for specific sins in Dante's nine circles of hell. The city's first black police officer, Nicholas Rey, is assigned to assist the chief of police in these cases and holds a key piece of evidence with no frame of reference. The Dante Club takes it upon themselves to help the police as much as possible without becoming formally involved for fear of having Dante banned by Harvard. As they do their best to catch the murderer before the police, they throw themselves and their loved ones ever deeper into harm's way.

  Now, going into this book, I expected several murders but I did not expect them to be so graphic and explained in such detail. I'm not sure why it surprised me, considering how terrible the torments in the Inferno are. It did take me aback, and force me to read the book slower than I normally do - bits and pieces at a time so that I didn't get too freaked out before bed or too grossed out to go on at all. This mystery novel dances along the line of being just a little too much for me. As for the mystery part - I'm usually pretty good at figuring out whodunit, but this one had me totally stumped. Which is a good thing, right? My only other complaint is that some of the characters were so similar that I began to get them confused with others, but that might be my own fault as opposed to the author's.

  If you are a big Dante fan and a big mystery fan, this might be a good book for you to check out. Just be forewarned that when the author says brutal murders, he means brutal. And described fully. But overall a great book. (show less)

   

   

  by Sarah Meaden on Nov 23, 2009 at 08:45PM

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