The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
"Do not ask what brings Dante to man but what brings man to Dante-- to personally enter his sphere, though it is forever severe and unforgiving."
I couldn't quite pinpoint, at first, what it was that made this book so difficult for me to finish. I mean, one would think (as I did when I bought it) that this type of thing would be like manna for me-- mystery and literature references!? How could I not be in heaven? But this book was a slow-starter and it took me no less than five tries to get through it all. And toward the end, I plowed through only because I had a pile of library books I needed to read before their return date.
The Dante Club is a story about a series of fictional murders that took place using Dante's Inferno as a blueprint. The main characters (Longfellow, Lowell, O.W. Holmes, etc.) were all real people, and the story centers around Longfellow's translation of Dante to English, but none of the action really took place. I don't know if I found that more confusing or annoying, but I had a really hard time at first keeping people straight and trying to determine how much about everyone I needed to know beforehand (nothing, as it turned out). The ending was interesting and not necessarily more or less predictable than other murder mysteries. I'm not sure that I would recommend this book to anyone.
What I Liked: The action of this book takes place in Boston around the end of the Civil War, and I really liked the depiction of these soldiers coming home and not really knowing what to do with themselves or where to go for help. This was several decades before PTSD was even described as "shell-shock," and I thought that it was an interesting glimpse into the lives of Civil War soldiers without actually reading a book (or watching Ken Burns's fabulous documentary).
What I Didn't Like: There was a lot I didn't like. There were too many characters introduced too quickly, and I didn't know whether I was supposed to remember them all or whether the action in the first 20 or so pages was of utmost importance (it wasn't). Also, the author clearly did a lot of research (and tells you so in the "Historical Note," but that might have caused him to include unimportant details just to show off his knowledge. I felt like the book dragged in (lots of) places.
I Would Recommend this Book to: No one. Not even Dante fans. Sorry.
Up Next: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood because I checked it out of the library and I've already started it. Holy cow, it's thick.
Side-note: I'm starting to get worried I might not finish my list since it is already 5 months past my 29th birthday and I haven't even read a third of what I had planned. Can I blame it on grad school and just have another 29th birthday next year? We'll see.
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