Point Books In Favor Of The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)
Original Title: | The Dante Club |
ISBN: | 034549038X (ISBN13: 9780345490384) |
Edition Language: | English |
Series: | The Dante Club #1 |
Characters: | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, James Thomas Fields, George Washington Greene, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Nicholas Rey |
Setting: | Boston, Massachusetts,1865(United States) Massachusetts(United States) |
Literary Awards: | CWA Ellis Peters Historical Award Nominee (2004) |
Matthew Pearl
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 424 pages Rating: 3.39 | 36331 Users | 2432 Reviews

Present Epithetical Books The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)
Title | : | The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1) |
Author | : | Matthew Pearl |
Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 424 pages |
Published | : | June 27th 2006 by Ballantine Books (first published 2003) |
Categories | : | Mystery. Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Thriller. Crime. Mystery Thriller |
Narration To Books The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)
A magnificent blend of fact and fiction, a brilliantly realized paean to Dante's continued grip on our imagination, and a captivating thriller that will surprise readers from beginning to end. Words can bleed. In 1865 Boston, the literary geniuses of the Dante Club—poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields—are finishing America's first translation of The Divine Comedy and preparing to unveil Dante's remarkable visions to the New World. The powerful Boston Brahmins at Harvard College are fighting to keep Dante in obscurity, believing that the infiltration of foreign superstitions into American minds will prove as corrupting as the immigrants arriving at Boston Harbor. The members of the Dante Club fight to keep a sacred literary cause alive, but their plans fall apart when a series of murders erupts through Boston and Cambridge. Only this small group of scholars realizes that the gruesome killings are modeled on the descriptions of Hell's punishments from Dante's Inferno. With the lives of the Boston elite and Dante's literary future in America at stake, the Dante Club members must find the killer before the authorities discover their secret. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and an outcast police officer named Nicholas Rey, the first black member of the Boston police department, must place their careers on the line to end the terror. Together, they discover that the source of the murders lies closer to home than they ever could have imagined. The Dante Club is a magnificent blend of fact and fiction, a brilliantly realized paean to Dante's continued grip on our imagination, and a captivating thriller that will surprise readers from beginning to end.Rating Epithetical Books The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)
Ratings: 3.39 From 36331 Users | 2432 ReviewsAssess Epithetical Books The Dante Club (The Dante Club #1)
Combining a host of literary figures with a well known literary work such as Dantes Comedy, and a murder mystery, seems like a sure shot way to entertain, educate and enlighten via the novel. Also a guarantee of best-seller status.Matthew Pearl has hit on this formula and his first three books cover Dante, Poe and Dickens mixed in with the dark shadows of a whodunit in each. In The Dante Club, his debut, we are introduced to literary luminaries such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. OliverThis novel is the reason you should never buy a book just because the cover says it's a New York Times Bestseller. It's a badly-constructed murder mystery set in Boston, in which a group of famous poets bands together to stop a series of murders inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy -- think Da Vinci Code, but with elderly characters who have an overdeveloped sense of self-importance and who aren't even terribly likable. The story also jumps back and forth through time without any warning, making it
This is my third attempt to finish this. I kept getting pulled away from it and as it was so complicated, I could not just pick up where I left off. So, had to go back to the beginning.The setting is post-Civil War Boston. Popular 19th Century writers, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Lowell, along with their publisher, Henry Fielding, are translating Dante's Inferno into English. At the same time, murders start occurring which mimic the punishments from the descending

Historical mystery set in 19th century Boston. A series of gruesome murders inspired by the punishments in Dante's Inferno is terrifying the people of Boston. Meanwhile the poets Longfellow and Lowell are fighting a battle against the governing body of Harvard who are resisting their attempts to bring Dante to the attention of Americans. The two poets, plus Oliver Wendell Holmes and publisher JT Fields, apply their literary skills to solving the murders and tracking down the killer.Interesting
Pearl is a good writer and the theme is engrossing for those familiar with Dante's magnum opus. However, the author's smug tone and obvious conviction of his own brilliance married my enjoyment of what could have been a perfectly acceptable literary mystery. I could also have done without the cheap-horror graphics of victims being eaten by insects etc regarding the various colorful murders, but I suppose Pearl was trying to convey some of the feeling of revulsion invoked by the torments
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!"
I wish I had spent my time reading Dante's "Inferno" rather than wasting my precious hours on "The Dante Club." I usually give a book 50 pages and if it doesn't grab me by then, I stop reading it. In spite of the fact that this one failed my 50 page test miserably, I was determined to finish it because it was a book club pick, so I forced myself to read one chapter every day--a grueling chore from beginning to end. Matthew Pearl writes what is part murder mystery and part historical fiction
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