About this title: The Dante Club includes such scholars and intellectual luminaries of mid-19th-century Boston as Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell. Their attempt to introduce Dante's DIVINE COMEDY to the Harvard curriculum leads to a series of murders based on the grisly deaths in Dante's INFERNO. And it's up to the Dante Club to find the killers.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House
Date Published: 02/2003
ISBN-13:9780375505294ISBN:0375505296
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 384 p. read more
"As a lover of mysteries, Boston and Dante I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately the book starts gross, turns into a fairly interesting mystery for a while then at the point where the climax should be wanders off sideways into the horrors of war, repressed homosexuality and mental illness. Mr. Pearl is LITERARY in the worst sense of the word. Read "Devil in the White City" instead--same feel, better written, truer. If Mr. Pearl is reading this I'd love to know what he has against Oliver Wendell Holmes."
"This author sure does name drop: "Dante", "Harvard", etc. Granted, I read this book because of that Dante name drop, even though I don't really like murder mystery type novels. (Consider that my disclaimer.) It's an attempt at an intelligent book that, despite the author's bio, I just don't feel quite accomplishes that. It deals entirely with the Inferno and nothing past that. The time period allowed for horse dysentry to cause a transportation meltdown and little girls to exclaim "oh, poppa!" (pretty much the only female characters, by the way), but the author didn't quite take me there. It attempts to deal with race and other such issues, but felt very superficial. The metaphors, though, were what killed me. I didn't find it lyrically poetic at all, though some are laugh out loud funny in the "he can't really be serious" sort of way. While I hope it encouraged some people to read Dante, I didn't really take anything from it. I give it one star because it is better than many other books out there, I suppose, but very close to being a complete waste of time."
"So a major fan of literature, murder and mystery should love this book right? Well thats what I thought too but I struggled with this one and couldnt wait to finish it..Its not that the book isnt great or doesnt have potential it is just too verbose and tedious..The book has alot of words and descriptive passages and flashbacks that take away from the fast paced murder mystery aspect and it makes the book drag. On a happier note or perhaps a more morbid one there are some gruesome and well detailed death scenes definitely not for the squeamish and it has changed my outlook on maggots and flies forever..I recommend this book only for those interested in the way something is said versus what is said and for those that enjoy an intelligent author with a great plot and dont mind the wordiness.."
"The Dante Club is a wonderful debut novel from Matthew Pearl. It is the story of the Fireside Poets - Henry Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell - who initially form the Dante Club to assist Longfellow in finishing the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's Commedia Divina.
The book starts off with the gruesome murder of Judge Healy, probably the most intense beginning to any book I've ever had the pleasure of reading. The reader finds Healy left out in his own back yard, naked, his clothes folded neatly and left to the side, his head nearly eaten out by maggots... it is a scene to behold.
And one that seems oddly familiar to the Dante Club. Was it not Dante himself who saw the Opportunists in the Inferno with a white flag next to them and maggots and wasps constantly picking at their flesh? With more people in high places dying, the Dante Club notices the pattern and begins an investigation to find their "Lucifer."
In conjunction to their hunt for "Lucifer," the Dante Club faces the dastardly Harvard School who is hell-bent on making sure that the Dante Club's dream of publishing the translated poem never becomes realized.
Pearl creates a well-researched book with rich historical details that perfectly capture post Civil War America. Having read the above description, you can tell that the book is extremely graphic, so it is not recommended for the light of heart. And as far as mysteries go, this one will keep you on your toes up until the very end.
(Overall, I give it a 9 out of 10 and only because once we did find out who Lucifer was there was an entire chapter of expository writing explaining why this was so and how this person got so screwed up - I kind of wanted that left to the imagination)."
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