Niente di trascendentale ( )

Synopsis:

The Dante Club is a club of famous poets from Boston who are working together on the translation of Dante's "La Divina Commedia" from Italian to English, arousing controversy for its contents among the Harvard Corporation. Additionally, some odd murders are shaking the entire city, and the poets happen to notice certain parallelisms between Dante's Inferno and the killings.

Personal Opinion:

Set amidst the post American Civil War, this is a story where no marines, detectives or intelligence officers are trying to investigate some murders. Instead, a group of intellectuals from Boston, all of them past their forties, draw some similarities between the crimes committed in their city and the work they are currently translating to English.

Original as the plot is, the story does not fail to entertain the reader. It may be a little slow-paced, though, especially during the first hundred pages. Moreover, the characters, despite their dinstictive profile, are kind of blurry, to the extent that you can even confound for their lacking of depth. They seem to act as a whole being.

Nevertheless, the mistery is managed with care and somehow you can't help but keep on reading for you can't easily put down the book. From my point of view, The Dante Club is the classic thriller that entertains you without becoming more than just a pure entertainment. Since I regard thrillers as a good way to spend time, I would surely recommend this one to anyone looking for nice suspenseful stuff (knowing it's not a stunning read!), as it accomplishes its main aim. Henceforth: ( )

I loved this book, and bought it purely from reading the back of the jacket. I really enjoyed the way Pearl uses fact and then combines that with a great murder mystery, and I was even tempted to read Dante's 'Inferno' after finishing this book.
There are some really gruesome scenes, which just goes to show that even before the advent of film and tv, Dante was able to give readers of 'The Inferno' a pretty nasty vision of hell.
All in all a great read, kept me enthraled for hours (only took me a couple of days to read) and have read it again since, and will most probably do so again. ( )

I had high hopes for this novel, but ultimately it fell a little flat. I love historical fiction with real characters, and this one has literary figures Oliver Wendell Holmes, Longfellow, and others. The setting is Boston, and murders that copy punishments from Dante’s Inferno are occurring at the same time that Longfellow is translating the Inferno to English. The literary figures become reluctant detectives.

But I think the author has real problems with the omniscient narration. I am not an inexperienced reader, and I had difficulty following the thread of the narration at times, especially when exciting events were taking place. It is not always clear whose eyes we are viewing a scene through, or even what is actually happening.

It’s still an entertaining read though, and the literary allusions are very well done. ( )

Listened on audio. Good story with a mystery that keeps you going. Makes you want to learn more about Dante and Longfellow. ( )