The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl
So, an ardent fan of Edgar Allen Poe sets out to solve the mystery of his final days soon after his death. He recruits two men both said to be the inspiration for Poe's fictional detective, Dupin, and they compete to solve the mystery. Sounds awesome, sign me up!
The most entertaining part of this book is the quote on the cover, in which Dan Brown demonstrates his ignorance of the term 'literary fiction'. Heh. Despite the fact that it involves a literary figure, this is crime fiction, although it's not clear a crime has been committed for the 130 odd pages that I slogged through before giving up.
Poe dies and is buried unlamented in a pauper's grave. Young lawyer and ardent fan, Quentin Clarke, becomes convinced that there is more to this than meets the eye, and risks the scorn of his middle-class family and friends by investigating. Quentin is not a particularly interesting protagonist; he drifts through his comfortable life neither rebelling against nor engaging with anything in particular. He reads Poe avidly, and that's about the only interesting thing about him.
This book is written in first person, in just the kind of slow, boring kind of prose I would expect from a staid, boring character. There's not a lively description or an interesting turn of phrase in the entire thing. Quentin goes to Paris. He is kidnapped while visiting the palace of Versailles. He's released again. I've read a hundred pages and it feels like six. Hundred, I mean. I have the sneaking suspicion that the author got out of doing his research by simply not including many details.
I liked the premise for this book. If it didn't I wouldn't have picked it up. But if you're going to write about literary figures, at least do them the service of putting some effort into your own prose. Turn Quentin's mildly eccentric fanboying into an obsession, have him pick up a bit of his master's style when it comes to writing and put him in real danger, and maybe this might have gone somewhere interesting.
Poe deserves better.
The most entertaining part of this book is the quote on the cover, in which Dan Brown demonstrates his ignorance of the term 'literary fiction'. Heh. Despite the fact that it involves a literary figure, this is crime fiction, although it's not clear a crime has been committed for the 130 odd pages that I slogged through before giving up.
Poe dies and is buried unlamented in a pauper's grave. Young lawyer and ardent fan, Quentin Clarke, becomes convinced that there is more to this than meets the eye, and risks the scorn of his middle-class family and friends by investigating. Quentin is not a particularly interesting protagonist; he drifts through his comfortable life neither rebelling against nor engaging with anything in particular. He reads Poe avidly, and that's about the only interesting thing about him.
This book is written in first person, in just the kind of slow, boring kind of prose I would expect from a staid, boring character. There's not a lively description or an interesting turn of phrase in the entire thing. Quentin goes to Paris. He is kidnapped while visiting the palace of Versailles. He's released again. I've read a hundred pages and it feels like six. Hundred, I mean. I have the sneaking suspicion that the author got out of doing his research by simply not including many details.
I liked the premise for this book. If it didn't I wouldn't have picked it up. But if you're going to write about literary figures, at least do them the service of putting some effort into your own prose. Turn Quentin's mildly eccentric fanboying into an obsession, have him pick up a bit of his master's style when it comes to writing and put him in real danger, and maybe this might have gone somewhere interesting.
Poe deserves better.