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Loading... The Dante Clubby Matthew Pearl
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No current Talk conversations about this book. 8432296325 An intelligent mix of history and mystery. The plot is imaginative yet plausible and the clues to the identity of the killer are deftly woven into the storyline. Dante's work and the real life characters are grounded in fact and treated with respect. This is a truly excellent read. The story of several Boston literary types, including Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, solving murders that are somehow connected to Dante. The Harvard-connected men are engaged in a slow and convivial translation of Dante's Inferno into English, when murders start to happen that seem to mimic Dante's punishments in the text. Dante is somehow connected to Matthew Pearl's academic work, but the prose is never dull. It is, however, somewhat uneven: the first several chapters read like literary fiction, but as the story gains steam the language becomes more pedestrian even as the action becomes more exciting. An excellent tale even if you know nothing of the men involved. The story of several Boston literary types, including Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, solving murders that are somehow connected to Dante. The Harvard-connected men are engaged in a slow and convivial translation of Dante's Inferno into English, when murders start to happen that seem to mimic Dante's punishments in the text. Dante is somehow connected to Matthew Pearl's academic work, but the prose is never dull. It is, however, somewhat uneven: the first several chapters read like literary fiction, but as the story gains steam the language becomes more pedestrian even as the action becomes more exciting. An excellent tale even if you know nothing of the men involved. OK mystery I listened to on audio. Murders based on Dante. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher Series
In 1865 Boston, the members 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 onto American bookshelves will prove as corrupting as the immigrants living in Boston Harbor. As they struggle to keep their sacred literary cause alive, the plans of the Dante Club are put in further jeopardy when a serial killer unleashes his terror on the city. Only the scholars realize that the gruesome murders are modeled on the descriptions from Dante's Inferno and its account of Hell's torturous punishments. With the lives of the Boston elite and Dante's literary future in America at stake, the Dante Club must find the killer before the authorities discover their secret. The Dante Club is a magnificent blend of fact and fiction, a brilliantly realized paean to Dante, his mythic genius, and his continued grip on our imaginations. No library descriptions found. |
Author ChatMatthew Pearl chatted with LibraryThing members from Oct 5, 2009 to Oct 16, 2009. Read the chat. Popular covers
![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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