Customer Reviews

The Suicide Club (Dover Thrift Editions)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Suicide Club is a really eye-catching title; once I saw Robert Louis Stevenson's name attached to it, I wasted little time in taking this little book home with me. I must say it's also rather striking to see a book of only 59 pages bearing a note that it is unabridged. Obviously, it's something of a short read, but it's also an enjoyable one. This is far from Stevenson's best-known work, but it's no secret that the author was a master storyteller.

The book consists of three interrelated short stories built around a most unusual prince and an even more unusual "social club." Prince Florizel of Bohemia indulges his thirst for adventure by undertaking all manner of secret excursions in disguise, aided always by his friend and Master of the Horse, Colonel Geraldine. While in London, one such late-night adventure leads them to the doors of The Suicide Club. This secret club serves an unusual purpose - it's essentially an assisted-suicide service. Suicide is a messy business - a lot of desperate men just can't bring themselves to take their own lives, and most also do not wish to cause a scandal among the friends and families they leave behind. For a fee, The Suicide Club arranges for the "accidental" deaths of its members. The luck of the draw determines who will die - and who will do the killing - on any given night. Anxious to put an end to such a barbaric society, Prince Florizel sets out to bring the murderous president of the club to justice, thereby setting the stage for the following two stories.

"Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk" finds a young American in France deceived by intrigues and seemingly framed for murder as he finds a dead body in his bed. A mysterious doctor in the next room engineers a plan for the innocent young man to avoid an undeserved fate - this is where the Saratoga trunk comes in, as it's the perfect size for hiding a corpse. The young man and his luggage are able to exit the country in the company of Prince Florizel, but there is more than one surprise in store for the prince when he learns what his new friend is secretly transporting. It is nothing less than a most disturbing calling card from Florizel's enemy, the former president of The Suicide Club.

"The Adventure of the Hansom Cab" brings the saga to a close. A young war hero just back from India finds himself selected in a most unusual manner for a secretive mission, one which culminates in a final confrontation between Prince Florizel and the president of The Suicide Club.

The book gets less exciting as you progress through the second and third stories, but the opening "Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts" is a great read. The atmosphere inside The Suicide Club is palpable, from the Prince's initiation to the strained jocularity of the nervous society members to the tension of the high stakes card games designed to close out each evening's activities. It's a great concept, but the power of the original inspiration is lost somewhat as the two successive stories wander rather far afield before being directed back toward Prince Florizel and his campaign against The Suicide Club in the end.

In 1882 Robert Louis Stevenson published The New Arabian Nights, a collection of his short stories that included The Suicide Club, itself comprised of three, loosely connected stories: The Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts, Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk, and The Adventures of the Hansom Cab. These three tales are found unabridged in this Dover edition (2000) reprint, The Suicide Club.

The Suicide Club is based on an imaginative, ghastly premise, a secret club dedicated to facilitating the suicide of its own members. In the first tale, The Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts, Stevenson not only fully develops this macabre concept, but also introduces his two protagonists, Prince Florizel of Bohemia and his personal aide, Colonel Geraldine, that play key roles in these three stories as well as in later stories.

Unfortunately, although the two sequels, Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk, and The Adventures of the Hansom Cab, initially are suspenseful, the endings seemingly fizzle out, and neither story quite achieves its promise. Nonetheless, these three stories in combination still rate 3.5 to 4 stars and will appeal to fans of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Point of interest: The film, The Suicide Club, was released in 2000; Roger Corman was the producer, Rachel Samuels was director, and the actors include Jonathan Pryce, David Morrissey, Paul Bettany, and Catherine Siggins (in the film version there is a female member of the exclusive suicide club). This film was also marketed under the title The Game of Death.

From the description given on the back of the book, one would expect "The Suicide Club" to be a stalwart mystery, full of heart-pounding drama and shocking twists. And perhaps in its day it was just such a mystery. However, as intriguing as the premise is, the stories fall far short of expectation.

"The Suicide Club" is a collection of three short stories. The first story is by far the strongest. There is a thin strand of connection between all three stories that remains uncovered until the end of each piece. In the first story, Prince Florizel of Bohemia and his companion, disguise themselves and attend a party of men who wish to end their lives. In what is termed a 'suicide club' men are dealt cards - with certain cards signifying roles that they are destined to play. Each night two men are chosen - as executioner and the one to be executed in a proscribed manner. Prince Florizel is sickened at this discovery and vows to hunt down the president of the club to exact his vengeance, hence the two succeeding stories.

Robert Louis Stevenson begins with an interesting story idea, but the succeeding two stories subtract more than they add. If he had developed the first story in a different direction, "The Suicide Club" might hold the readers' interest for the entire book. Although a quick read, the last two stories drag through contrivances that are too far-flung to successfully complete the story.

This is really three interwoven stories beginning with "Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts" and then "Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk" and finally "The Adventure of the Hansom Cab." They were published in his story collection "New Arabian Nights" and involve a secret society of suicidal young and old men. You may find the plots predictable or familiar by now, but when you remember that he was the first to come up with these themes and situations, it's remarkable. Eerie and suspenseful.

This book is full ( I MEAN FULL ) of typos. It really does take the pleasure of reading away. I bought it and returned it the very next day. Please look for this book from another publisher here in Amazon itself and buy that (one that has pictures on the cover). I love shopping from Amazon...

It's the concept of a profitable 'Suicide Club' for world-weary gentlemen, oddly resonant in our times of earnest debate over the morality of assisted suicide, of Dr. Kevorkian, that makes this little trilogy of sketches fascinating. RL Stevenson wrote these pieces for a magazine market. They are grizzly emotional pornography, not very well executed as pure literature, not up to the standard of Edgar Allen Poe, who must have been Stevenson's model, but still "unsettling" enough to warrant a half-hour's reading. To summarize the narrative in any way would be to spoil the novelty of discovering the Mr. Hyde who hid his darker pysche in the boy adventurer of Treasure Island. There's a hint of Conan Doyle, and of the swagger of Harry Flashman, in the depiction of Prince Florizel, the protagonist of these stories. No doubt aficionados of the genre will smirk at me for being so flabbergasted by the discovery. I felt roughly the same shock when I stumbled upon the bizarrely obscene pornography written by Roald Dahl, published in the book called 'The Umbrella Man'. Ah, what evils lurk in the heart of Man ....

RLS is a fabulous writer. These stories are not necessarily his best but they give a flavor of his obsessions with the dark side of the puritanical Victorian soul. He catalogues the trials of men in demanding circumstances, often self-imposed, with a 19th century sensibility that oozes subversion. He winks at us with glittering language.

I became interested in these stories when I read in a Charlie Chaplin biography by David Robinson that Chaplin considered making a movie of the story. To be honest, I am not certain if I could picture a movie version of "The Suicide Club". Since I could not picture the Chaplin character in any role in the book, I am glad he chose not to pursue the project.

"The Suicide Club" deals with the adventures of Prince Florizel and Colonel Geraldine. While incognito, they discover a suicide club. Each night at the club a member is randomly chosen as an executioner and another as a killer. After the prince is nearly executed, the story goes in strange directions. The main characters only make a brief appearance in the second story/chapter to transfer a mysterious body that turns up in a character's bed. The dead man turns out to be Colonel Geraldine's brother. The third chapter/story shows the prince and colonel to be exacting revenge on the president of the Suicide Club in a duel that is arranged through odd circumstances.

With the interesting story that introduces the book, my attention was peaked. The Suicide Club in itself is an interesting concept. After the suicide club is dissolved, the rest of the story tails off disappointingly.