Customer Reviews

The Dante Club

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3 star:		(69)
2 star:		(49)
1 star:		(32)

 

 

Every few years a book is written that breaks the mold of the standard mystery/thriller fare. Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose", Martin Cruz Smith's "Rose", more recently Boston Teran's "God is a Bullet", to name a few. "The Dante Club", the remarkable debut of writer Matthew Pearl, is another example that represents a bold, ambitious, and refreshing approach to the familiar serial killer "who-dunnit".

I'll admit that at first I was somewhat leery of the concept: the Fireside Poets - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell cast as investigators of a string of horrific murders? An ambitious premise for a novel, for sure, but more aptly, bizarre and ripe with risk. Pearl, however, pulls this off with a curious combination of the poet's love of the language and the storyteller's knack for pace and action.

The "Dante Club" refers to the group assembled by Longfellow - including Holmes and Lowell - to assist him in the first American translation of Dante's "Devine Comedy". As people in high places - a judge, a minister, a wealthy merchant - turn up tortured and murdered in scenes recreating those described in Dante's classic, the poets hit the streets of Boston and Cambridge in search of the killer. The result is an exceptionally well-researched book that is rich in historical detail while capturing the post-Civil War American psyche and culture. Pearl's description of the Civil War horrors and post-war trama is especially gripping. Not since "Silence of the Lambs" or "Se7en" have murders been so brutally and vividly portrayed, as the victims are variously eaten-alive by maggots, buried upside-down and set on fire, and (literally) cut in half. Yet despite the graphic butchery, this is a book that must not be rushed, but savored for the intricacy of the plot and the intensity of the prose. It is the rare book that draws the reader to revisit the poetry of Longfellow, US history in the wake of the Civil War, and the mystery of Dante in 19th century America. In summary, a stunning first novel from a writer destined to become a household name. Don't miss it!

Mattew Pearl's recent novel, the Dante Club, combines history, suspense, and mystery in a truly unique reading experience. Famous, well known characters such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Windell-Holmes and James Russell Lowe are intricately woven into a plot which develops around their translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. Their work is disrupted however, when a series of murders in Boston are modeled after mankind's punishment in hell as described in Dante's Inferno. The murder of prominent citizens modeled after their translation make them suspect.

These noted historical authors work closely with a black police officer, Nichola Ray, to prove their innocence and solve the murders.

The vivid description of Boston in 1865 and the unique literary skill of Mattew Pearl to weave the history of the civil war and racial relations into this time period is pure genius. The words used to describe the Boston street scene at this time in history are reminiscent of Caleb Carr's description of New York City in his book the Alienist.

This book is a must for any reader who enjoys historical fiction and I would strongly recommend it to them.

I've read many reviews from other people touting the "greatness" of Matthew Pearl's debut novel. While I DO agree The Dante Club is a great achievement for Pearl as it showcases his Harvard education, I can't quite stomach the absolute opaqueness the novel exudes. After reading the novel, I know more about Dante and the historical circle of Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes, but I don't have a very clear sense of the STORY, the murderous tale that is the premise of the novel. You will be absolutely blown away by the grotesquely wonderful opening of The Dante Club--maggots and all--but you'll quickly lose interest as Pearl takes you on a very long, DRY journey through a post-Civil War Boston. In a nutshell: You might get to visit the rings of Dante's Hell and appreciate Matthew Pearl's use of that classic as a launchpad for The Dante Club, but you're better served to put down--PUT DOWN!--this novel and quickly run to a more entertaining historical murder thriller like Caleb Carr's The Alienist.

I am one of those people who always gives a book a fair chance to impress or entertain me. Even if I am bored, I'll keep reading in the hopes that it will get better. This one didn't, and after getting halfway through it, I had to put myself out of my misery. I was so disgusted with it that I threw it in the trash rather than passing it on to someone else.

Before you decide that it must have been just too highbrow for me (the last person I told I hated it replied, "Danielle Steele must be more your speed"), let me say that I teach literature and my area of expertise is the Renaissance. Let me also say, to anyone who thinks of attacking from the opposite direction, that I enjoyed Caleb Carr's THE ALIENIST. And Ian McEwan, Gunter Grass, Ha Jin, Toni Morrison, and Henry James number among my favorite authors--a pretty eclectic bunch, I'd say.

Dante is not the problem, nor is the idea of a mystery involving well-known persons. It is Pearl's boringly pretentious style. He is much more impressed with his own cleverness than I could ever be with this book. Some reviews I've read marvel that this is a first book; I say, "It shows."

I'm told the ending makes it worth sticking with; but as Carly Simon said, "I haven't got time for the pain"--especially when there are so many excellent books out there I'm dying to read.

The premise of "The Dante Club" is absolutely fabulous: the year is 1865 in Boston, and a small group of renowned men (including physician Oliver Wendell Holmes and poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell) have come together to translate Dante's "Inferno" for an American audience. While the Dante Club is hard at work on their translation, a series of gruesome murders takes place around town. The Dante experts soon realize that each of the crimes is based on Dante's descriptions of Hell's punishments, and the group of scholars turn into detectives as they desperately attempt to solve the mystery and find the killer.

"The Dante Club" is a work of historical fiction. Most of the main characters in the novel are people who actually existed, and history and literary buffs will appreciate the way Matthew Pearl managed to wind these well-known characters into a murder mystery. Pearl is also a Dante scholar himself, and his superior knowledge of Dante's work is illustrated on every page of this book. However, all that being said, I didn't really enjoy the story. This book really dragged in a lot of places...the first 100 pages or so are incredibly dry, then things get exciting for a while, but by the time page 250 rolls around, things are dragging again. I was pretty disappointed. I really enjoyed "The Da Vinci Code" and "The Devil in the White City," and I thought "The Dante Club" was going to be sort of a combination of those two books. In a way it was, but it dragged so much that I just couldn't get into it.

Again, I really admire the effort Pearl put forth in developing the concept of this book, which is very unique and has the potential to be quite fabulous. Unfortunately, the writing is incredibly tedious in most places. It took me a long time to read this book, primarily because I was completely unenthused every time I picked it up...I knew I wasn't going to enjoy reading it, which was a real shame.

Matthew Pearle's novel is a brisk post-Civil War whodunit interspersed with thoughtful insights into Dante--his world, his drive to tell his story, his faith. Pearle uses intriguing historical aspects in weaving his story, including a trio of well-known New England poets, the political machinations involved in the running of Harvard College, and Boston's first Negro policeman, an eminently likeable character. Whether one is a lover of mystery novels or of Dante, The Dante Club is a good read--clever, thought-provoking, fast-paced.

Once again I find myself opposite a tide of favorable opinion regarding a popular new book. I was, of course, excited to read Matthew Pearl's notable first novel, The Dante Club, both because of the many positive reviews and the historical context. I'm a sucker for historical figures in fictional situations and my tastes lean toward the lowbrow, so if the historical figures are running around solving mysteries, so much the better.

My excitement with The Dante Club, however, dissolved to dismay and ended in disgust. I have very few kind words to offer about this weak and pompous offering about Boston's foremost Dante scholars solving a series of grisly murders that mimic the punishments Dante doled out to the damned in his Inferno.

Hard to believe, but in post-Civil War America, Dante Alighieri had not yet become the college student's worst enemy. His seminal work, The Divine Comedy, had not yet been completely translated from the Italian. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, along with Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell and publisher JT Fields are working on just such a project when they are approached by the police, in the person of Nicholas Rey, Boston's first black officer, with a scrap of paper on which is scrawled a phrase in Italian. The paper is related to a murder on which Rey is working. In the first of many befuddling moves, the Dante Club, as these scholars call themselves, elects to keep mum, both in the translation of the paper and when it becomes clear to them that the murders are Dante-related. In true mystery style, the group decides to investigate themselves.

It's clear that author Pearl has done scads of research about the principle characters and wanted to bring them to vivid life within the pages of The Dante Club. But it seems equally clear that this research was his undoing. He throws too much data at we poor readers, without the skill required to make it seem effortless or natural. He delves too deeply into the personal lives of Longfellow, portrayed as a spectral weakling unable to recover from his wife's death, and Holmes, who just can't seem to get along with his adult son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who would go on to become one of America's foremost jurists.

These characterizations may be acurate, but the disproportionate amount of space spent recounting them is both unnecessary and distracting. Certainly, there is a secret joke in Holmes, Sr., chastising Holmes, Jr., for studying law and telling him there is no future in it, when we, from the perspective of history, know that Jr. would serve on the Supreme Court for thirty years, but it is completely unnecessary to the story. Equally frivolous is the amount of time spent examining the underbelly of academic politics.

Pearl includes a note at the end of this novel that indicates he recreated much of the language and dialogue from the "poems, essays, novels, journals, and letters of the Dante Club members and those closest to them." Ah! That would explain why most of the dialogue spoken by the Dante Club members sounds stilted, pompous and, at times, comically inept! People do not write the way they speak and, rather than bring these famous figures to life, Pearl embalms them in their own words, making them sound effete and foolish.

Most interesting is the character of Rey, the black cop, who is unwanted by his white counterparts and those he serves and protects. Though no such police officer existed in postwar Boston, Pearl uses Rey as a vehicle to introduce us to the racial difficulties arising from the Civil War. He is also useful device for prolonging the story, since, because he is black, none of Rey's fellow policement believe his theories and won't commit resources to following his investigative intuition. If he's been white, the book might have been a hundred pages shorter.

The plot itself is surprisingly reasonable. When we learn how all the pieces fit together, it makes sense and I reluctantly applaud Pearl for this. But other clunky moments are just unbelievable, like the Club's decision to stonewall the police for fear their translation of Dante will be shelved and they themselves might be considered suspects. What? Let's not help catch a violent killer so our book can be published? This is not consistent with what I know of Longfellow and his crew.

Overall, The Dante Club is a long, dull look into the pettiness of American academia with occasional spikes of interest that come with descriptions of the violent killings. It doesn't hold a candle to Caleb Carr's "The Alienist", despite what other reviewers have said.

I've noticed that most of these reviews are rather critical, but I say give Mr. Pearl a break. It's his first novel! Sure, sometimes it does have that feel about it, lacking the smoothness of a classic, but The Dante Club makes for fascinating reading. However it is a book for a certain type of reader...the ordinary mystery reader looking for page-turning thrills is likely to lose interest. I, though, usually prefer classics, historical fiction, and, yes, anything and everything associated with Italy and Italians, historical or otherwise. So Pearl's book was a treat. It is very intellectual, literary, clever. I think the idea behind the story was brilliant, and I love the combination of literary history and fictional plot. I recommend the book to those looking for intelligence in their thrillers, fans of Dante or Italian literature and history, readers of historical fiction, or 19th century American poetry or literature(specifically Longfellow or Holmes) and those looking for a different sort of mystery. Contrary to how it may sound,I think you'll find it neither boring nor dry,and like me, enjoy several hours of fascinating diversion.
Thanks Matthew, and I'm looking forward to your next novel!

If you are familiar with the works of Longfellow, Holmes and Lowell, this will be an intriguing read in terms of how successfully (or otherwise) the author blends biography with the demands of the mystery genre. And if that is your approach, I suggest you stop reading this review and turn to others who share your historical and poetical tastes. Personally, I came to this novel purely as a mystery. The authenticity of the biographical details did not interest me; the characters only compelled me in terms of their credibility vis-a-vis the narrative. In those terms, the novel's successes are Pearl's sense of time and urgency; the dialogue is persuasively Victorian and the pace moves along briskly. Where biography encroaches on fiction is in the character of Longfellow - too much weight is given to his existence, as though the characters were looking over their shoulders from an advanced period in time, acutely aware of the legacy this poet would leave to American society. 'Looking over one's shoulder at the past' being a particular motif of Longfellow's, these nudge-wink references might stir the juices of the poet-academic readers, who will get chills from the multi-layered prose. For the reader looking for a good bedside read or page-turner for the long-haul flight, this is a bit too obscure. The reverence with which the other characters treat Longfellow is absurd, even if you have background knowledge on the historical figure. For those who have the time, interest and concentration to invest on the prose, this is a good buy, but for those looking for a good mystery and nothing else, look elsewhere.

I don't usually read mysteries, but since this book has a historical setting, which I love, I gave it a try. I loved this book! The concept is so imaginative and it made me look deeper into the actual writings of Dante and the American poets -- works I hadn't thought about since College Prep. English in high school. I will buy Matthew Pearl's next book. But one note: another reviewer was outraged by the "antagonistic" foreward in this book. I presumed the foreward to be just more fiction, created by the author, and found it compelling.