“The Club Dumas” presents a rich feast for fans of literate mysteries and of old books with yellow-dry pages, redolent of spice and nutmeg. In a style that reminds me of Umberto Eco, Pérez-Reverte leads us through a labyrinth of books, clues, and characters that can be simplified by stating that the story is a tale of two books: "The Three Musketeers;" and “The Book of the Nine Doors in Kingdom of Shadows,” which may reveal incantations that summon Satan. The “hero,” Lucas Corso, is a book detective who is working on two assignments simultaneously. For one employer, he must authenticate a newly discovered manuscript of the "Anjou Wine" chapter of "The Three Musketeers," the hand-written revisions to which may shed light on how much credit should be allocated between Alexandre Dumas and one of his collaborators. For another employer, Corso must compare three editions of the seventeenth-century's “The Nine Doors,” in an attempt to discover which two of the three known copies are forgeries. Interwoven between these two story lines are lots of other books, Madrid, Paris, Lisbon, a few films, strange women, more old books, Cardinal Richelieu, Alexandre Dumas’ mistress, the bonfires of the Inquisition, and, well–- pacts with the devil. If you pay attention, you will notice that the third-person point of view is occasionally punctuated by a first-person narrator whose identity is not revealed until near the end. I can’t safely reveal much more plot, which will be really fun for you to unravel, so perhaps I should just introduce you to the protagonist, Lucas Corso. (A goateed and bespeckled Johnny Depp played him in the movie, "The Ninth Gate," and served as a useful visual reference for me.) If you like the Corso character description I provide below, you will probably love this book. If not, you should consider taking a pass, because Corso is front-and-center for all 360 pages, and I was glad he was. Let’s call this a character-driven review.Lucas Corso“Corso was a mercenary of the book world, hunting down books for other people. That meant talking fast and getting his hands dirty” (5), but in moments of candor, he will admit that he really belongs to the world’s oldest profession, because when it comes to books, “conventional morality doesn’t exist.” (149) Yet, we do not completely believe him when he repeatedly claims that his interest in books is “financial rather than aesthetic in nature.” Corso chooses his smiles to suit the circumstance, but, at least 50 times, his smile is translated as “conspiratorial.” Indeed, we, the readers, feel a friendly complicity with him. Corso, aged 45, wears an oversized and rumpled coat with deformed pockets into which he stuffs books and a hip-flask of Bols gin. With his calm expression, he handles manuscripts “with the reverence of a priest handling holy vestments.” He glances sardonically through glasses that are continually askew, especially when indulging his unspoken foot fetish. At night, Corso sips gin and recreates the battle of Waterloo in his head. He wasn’t always so cynical. As a boy, he read epic accounts of Napoleon and Le Grand Armée, and he dreamed of his great-great grandfather, a grenadier and staunch Bonapartist, slain at Waterloo. Corso's apartment is shorn of photos and memorabilia-- except for said grandfather’s Old Guard saber in its brass and leather sheath. When he sleeps, he is dream-haunted by defeated French soldiers who make him question his own cynicism. When his blood courses with the "deadening thickness of gin," he also remembers his ex-girlfriend, Nikon, a casualty of his cynicism and inability to love. We should shoot Corso on general principle for letting Nikon slip away. The descendant of Treblinka survivors, she was full of commitment to causes and to the plight of the suffering. “Whenever Israeli soldiers appeared on television, she would leap naked from their bed and kiss the screen, weeping ‘Shalom, Shalom’ in a caressing tone.” (203) Nikon was happy crying over it all and proud of her tears. “It’s because I’m alive,” she said. She found images from film with which to supply her life with meaning-- like when Rutger Hauer dies slumping in "Blade Runner" or when Paul Henreid sings the “ Marsellaises” in “Casablanca.” Corso just shrugged, believing Nikon had accepted “the universal lie of the happy ending.” She finally abandoned Corso, having pronounced him, “dead as his books because he never loved anybody.”Indeed Corso exhibits a “detached fatalism of one who waits for life to make the next move,” but, while waiting, he keeps a bug-out bag ready so he can disappear without a trace. Other CharactersAlthough Corso is ever-present, there is a rich array of other characters who interact with him. I tended to get them confused because they have similar-sounding foreign names, which I’m tempted to list in entirety here, but space constraints force me to mention only three. Fargas– is the owner of one of the rarest old-book collections in the world. “Tall and thin as an El Greco figure,” he lives in Lisbon in a mausoleum-like mansion called, “Quinta da Soledade– The House of Solitude.” The last descendant of a noble family, he moves slowly like an “elegant, pale worn ghost.” Wandering like a lost soul among his rare books, he plays his violin to soothe and summon the ghosts of his lost books. In order to pay his creditors, he must sell a couple of priceless books each year--Abraham, forced to sacrifice his beloved Isaacs. Were he not preoccupied with his assignment, Corso would have been happy to join the vultures in the Fargas feast, but instead, he settles for inspecting Fargas' copy of "The Nine Doors." Irene Adler– a perpetually barefooted woman who claims to have once wrestled with an angel, and, even though she lost, “she learned a few things.” Irene repeatedly asks Corso if he believes in the devil. They have a long discussion about how Satan was portrayed by Dante and Milton. Irene Adler (shares a name with a Sherlock Holmes character)and carries a British passport with 224 Baker Street listed as her residence. In a very funny scene (263), Corso attempts to make love to her and replays the battle of Waterloo in his head as he tries to figure out a strategy to satisfy her while saving face. Irene accompanies Corso and helps him to understand the unseen world and his ex-girlfriend, Nikon.Ceniza Brothers– twins Pedro and Pablo are experts on ancient printing and forgeries who operate a shop in the Old Quarter of Madrid. “Grumpy bachelors and fond of their drinks, they were inseparable.” (113) Each day they drain a half liter of wine for breakfast while discussing books and bullfighting. Through "bony nicotine-stained fingers," they examine Corso’s copy of "The Nine Doors" and from them we learn much about: moveable type; manual printing; various imperfections; interpolated pages; and printers marks.My Conclusion“By Godfrey but this was fun, sir.” Due to some remnant of puritanism, I have neglected the fun books over the past decade, because I have focused on “literary” books in a search for wisdom. But now I am in the mood for something different. Well, the last one arriving at the party, I now proclaim: “it is also wise to have fun.” I am continually struck by how the reading-god gives me something in my reading to parallel my own life, which I try to articulate in my reviews when I can. Sure enough, she delivered again for me with “The Club Dumas.” As a parallel to my own dilemma between serious and fun reading, a character, towards the end of the book, delivers an impassioned plea for the reading of well-plotted, swashbuckling adventures like those written by Dumas. Long lost novels return us to our innocence. As we mature, we admire Flaubert or prefer Stendhal, or Faulkner, García -Marquez, Durrell, Kafka. We become different from each other, opponents even. But we all share a conspiratorial wink when we talk about certain magical authors and books. Those that made us discover literature without weighing us down with dogma or teaching us rules. This is our true common heritage: stories faithful not to what people see but to what people dream.... Now neither children nor young people nor anyone has a spiritual heritage. They all watch TV. (325) There are no innocent readers anymore. Each overlays the text with is own perverse view. A reader is the total of all he’s read, in addition to all the films and television he’s seen. To the information supplied by the author he’ll always add his own. And that’s where the danger lies: an excess of references caused you to cease. The book is never false. It is the reader who makes a false reading. (335)The characters of "The Club Dumas" parallel different types of readers as well as characters in Alexandre Dumas, even as I, in some ways, parallel them as well. (I think I am a Nikon rather than a Corso.) To the narrator of "Club Dumas," life is a game. And books are a reflection of that game. May that game survive into the digital age and continue to bring good stories to good readers until the end of time. Amen. Johnny Depp as Lucas Corso in "The Ninth Gate."May 7, 2012
Perché leggere Zafòn quando si può leggere Pérez-Reverte?La vita è retta dal caso e ben poco viene a collimare, ma quando troviamo lo stesso schema in letteratura ci sentiamo presi un po’ in giro.Lucas Corso è un mercenario bibliofilo senza scrupoli: compra e vende con metodi poco ortodossi, indaga sulla storia dei libri, giudica vecchi incunaboli, si prostituisce al migliore offerente eseguendo per lui il lavoro sporco, e non esitando ad affidare ad altri quello ancora più sporco. Corso è privo di emozioni, quando non strettamente attinenti alla sfera dei libri antichi, e bravo a fingere come il migliore dei manipolatori; ha un unico amico –se di amicizia si può parlare-, il libraio dongiovanni Flavio La Ponte (italiano, inutile chiederlo: pare che i nostri uomini all’estero abbiano questa fama), nessuna compagna, nessun legame. La storia, narrata da un personaggio interno onnisciente -Boris Balkan- inizia prima che Corso compaia in scena, e precisamente con la morte per impiccagione (suicidio od omicidio, difficile stabilirlo) di Enrique Taillefer, influente collezionista di libri antichi. Poco prima di morire, il riccone commissiona a Flavio La Ponte la vendita di un capitolo manoscritto dei Tre moschettieri, “Il vino d’Angiò”, ed è qui che Corso viene incaricato delle indagini dall’amico Flavio. Questo, tuttavia, non è l’unico filo conduttore del romanzo: poco dopo, Corso viene convocato da Varo Borja, collezionista senza scrupoli di libri sul diavolo, che lo ingaggia per provare l’autenticità del suo Le nove porte del regno delle ombre, volume in latino stampato nel XVII secolo e di cui esistono solo tre copie certificate. Aristide Torchia, lo stampatore, fu bruciato dall’Inquisizione insieme alle sue opere per aver dichiarato di essere stato ispirato dal Diavolo in persona. In fondo al volume, nove incisioni che richiamano i Tarocchi e la simbologia esoterica.Tocca a Corso recarsi a Lisbona ad esaminare il volume della collezione Fargas –appartenente a un nobile in disgrazia- e poi a Parigi per giudicare quello della vedova Ungern, appassionata anch’essa del Diavolo e scrittrice di libri esoterici. Sulle sue tracce, tuttavia, c’è un misterioso figuro dai baffi neri con la faccia sfigurata da una cicatrice, che Corso soprannomina prontamente Rochefort per la sua somiglianza fisica con il mortale nemico di D’Artagnan. E sembra che il feuilleton di Dumas prenda vita, quando anche Milady fa la sua comparsa nella persona di Liana Lausauca, la vedova Taillefer, intenzionata a riprendersi “Il vino d’Angiò” a ogni costo.L’intreccio, dunque, è già notevolmente complicato: Corso intuisce una connessione tra Dumas e le Nove Porte, e inizia a indagare in quella direzione. Il cardinale Richelieu, infatti, sembrava non essere esattamente estraneo al mondo esoterico. Ulteriori omicidi, inoltre, rischiano di coinvolgere il mercenario nella storia del libro del Diavolo più di quanto non gli aggradi. I personaggi, i luoghi e gli eventi dei Tre Moschettieri sembrano essersi materializzati nella realtà. Lo studio delle incisioni dei tre esemplari delle Nove Porte rivela risultati inaspettati. A complicare il tutto, una strana ragazza dai capelli biondi e corti sembra incrociare troppo spesso la strada di Corso, presentandosi con il nome di Irene Adler, la donna che beffò Sherlock Holmes in uno dei racconti di Conan Doyle.Arturo Pérez-Reverte non si accontenta di intrecciare tutti i fili della narrazione in uno: ed ecco che il finale del libro non è scontato, nemmeno per chi ha visto il film.Per farla breve, è apprezzabile il tentativo di Pérez-Reverte di tentare un intreccio così macchinoso e contorto: l’autore, però, non ha tenuto conto del fatto che, quando si carica in questo modo il lettore di aspettative, qualunque sia la risoluzione prescelta quasi certamente non risulterà soddisfacente. Il club Dumas resta in bilico tra il thriller e il gotico, senza sbilanciarsi con troppa convinzione verso quest’ultimo nonostante lo promettesse fin dalle prime pagine, e accelerando inutilmente la narrazione nel finale.Molto accurato, invece, lo stile dell’autore: superiore a molti suoi connazionali contemporanei, mi viene da suggerire malignamente che il romanzo non abbia venduto quanto L’ombra del vento perché troppo ostico per il lettore medio da spiaggia. Il paragone con quel romanzo in particolare risulta spontaneo, essendo in sostanza entrambi gialli che si muovono nel mondo dei libri. Al contrario di quella di Zafòn, asettica ed elementare, la prosa di Pérez-Reverte è ricca e i periodi sono ragionevolmente lunghi: indugia molto sulla terminologia specifica che riguarda manoscritti e incunaboli. Per di più, il romanzo è accompagnato dalle incisioni delle Nove Porte (di tutti e tre gli esemplari del libro) e dalle tabelle compilate dal protagonista durante i suoi studi sul campo. Consigliato agli amanti dei thriller, agli appassionati del genere gotico, a chi apprezza Dumas (abbondano i riferimenti alla sua vita e alle sue opere), o semplicemente a chi adora i libri sui libri.
What do You think about The Club Dumas (2006)?
A decent thriller built around a well developed Literary Detective - hard edged, cynical, gin swilling Lucas Corso. Arturo Perez Reverte joins with his debut novel a club of writers for book lovers who built their stories around rare books, dusty libraries, obscure texts or frequent references to popular novels. I'm talking about Umberto Eco, who gets a nod in the Club Dumas and may have inspired the author, and of the likes of Jasper Fforde and Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I've considered and discarded Dan Brown from this lists, as he seemed more interested in conspiracy theories and cheap tricks than in ancient manuscipts and the people who wrote them.The story in Club Dumas has two major components that weave around one another and drive the mystery forward: the popular authors of adventure serials in 19th Century France and the esoteric / cabalistic researchers of 17th Century Toledo, Prague or Venice. Lucas Corso is on a mission to find the connection between the loose pages of the original handwritten draft of a chapter from The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas and the Devil summoning tome of a Venetian printer burned by the Inquisition in the year 1666.I did'n give 5 stars because, although I enjoyed the story, this is one of the books where the journey is more important than the destination. It is also apparent that this is a debut novel, and the author is still searching for his particular style. The lovingly chosen quotes from Dumas, Zevaco, Sabatini, Poe, Melville or Doyle give flavor and illuminate some of the story points, but in other places the extensive research done on the above mentioned subjects feel like infodumps. Some other passages where Reverte uses dark streets , stormy nights and mysterious shadows to create the desired mood feel like exercises in imitating his favorite authors.Conclusion: a good starting point for Arturo Perez-Reverte showing a lot of promise for his later work, and a well of information about Dumas and his fellow adventure writers
—Algernon
I've always heard mention of "The Club Dumas" but never knew what the story was about. I like reading Dumas so will give this story built around Dumas's work a try.
—Sue
There were some deliciously clever turns of phrase, but they did not make this book worth the read. As other reviewers have said, the characters were flat and the plot is a bit too intentionally clever (without actually being so) to hold my interest. The book did get easier to read as time went on, but when all was said and done, it was just a more high brow version of a bad Dan Brown novel. The best parts of the book happened when characters meta-talked about readers, authors, and their responsibilities. "'Listen, Corso, there are no innocent readers anymore. Each overlays teh text with his own perverse view. A reader is the total of all he's read, in addition to all the films and television he's seen. To the information supplied by the author he'll always add his own. And that's where the danger lies: an excess of references caused you to create the wrong opponent, or an imaginary opponent.'"and "'The information a book provides is an objective given. It may be presented by a malevolent author who wishes to mislead, but it is never false. It is the reader ot makes a false reading'" (335). I don't know that I agree with this second bit. In mysteries especially, the author often doesn't give enough information for the reader to properly solve the mystery. Sometimes she's not supposed to, I guess. In those cases, we're more interested in the detective. But the detective here isn't that interesting. And his interactions with other characters make very little sense. *groan*
—Emily
