I loved The Dante Club (reviewed in July). It was intelligent, and pure geeky fun, and I had a lovely time picking my way among the corpses in 19th century Boston. So I jumped at the chance to take The Poe Shadow on paperbackswap.com.I should preface this by admitting I haven't read much Poe. I have a couple of collections; I've just ... never gotten around to it. But I'm familiar with his most famous poems, I knew who C. Auguste Dupin was, and I knew a little about Poe's life and reputation - about the fact that though he was often condemned for being a drunkard he was not, and in fact had a very low tolerance for alcohol. And about his marriage to his 13-year-old cousin, and his despair at her early death. But the only work I've read about him before this was some dreadful thing I can't recall the name of and won't look up which cast him and P.T. Barnum as detectives... This had to be light years better. And it was. Especially in the beginning I had as much fun as I did with The Dante Club. The story is told in the first person by Quentin Clark, an attorney in Baltimore in 1849 who has long enjoyed reading Poe. "Enjoyed" is actually an understatement; Clark's interest in the poet and his work begins to sound like obsession, and that becomes full-blown as the book proceeds - but it begins with his defiance of his family's opinion that Poe is a dangerous influence. He reads every scrap that he can find, and enters into a correspondence with Poe, even offering his legal services pro bono if they are needed to defend the magazine Poe dreams of starting. Upon Poe's death, Clark is distressed by the tone of newspaper articles and essays. Most of them paint him, obliquely or outright, as a drunk, and most take the tone that he didn't contribute much to the universe and won't much be missed. Outraged, Clark begins a campaign to try to gain retractions and corrections, to try to rehabilitate Poe's reputation, which leads by various paths to his quest to find the real man who was Poe's inspiration for Dupin, the genius of detection. Surely the real Dupin can discover the truth about Poe's death and clear his name. The quest leads Clark to Paris, which is in an upheaval of government; it has not been so long since the French Revolution, and now the republic is beginning to give way to a new empire under the Bonapartes. It's dangerous, but the obsession is strong, and Clark soon has two possible Dupins on his hands: the attorney Baron Dupin, whom Clark had written earlier, and Duponte, who is the new lead contender. Baron Dupin is a charlatan and showman, and Clark decides he can't be the one - especially as he learns more about Duponte, an investigator who fits the descriptions in Poe's stories perfectly. He works to bring the latter back to Baltimore, and to complicate matters the former comes too, along with his wife (a beautiful assassin) and a matched set of men who appear to be hunting him for reasons unknown. It's not a spoiler to state that Clark winds up accused of a murder; that's given on the first page of the book. And I don't think it's a spoiler to say that that's about when the book started to lose me. Halfway through the book, not the first page. Clark's need to exonerate Poe grows to a state in which he can do nothing else; he loses his practice, and, through her family, his fiancee, and shortly is in danger of losing the home he inherited from his parents as his aunt brings a case against him stating he has lost his sanity. Between simply being a little fed up with a man who would sacrifice everything without even a thought - and not even so much the fact of the sacrifice as the pain it caused his family and beloved Hattie - and behaving in a thoroughly unreasonable manner in pursuit of a noble goal; and being more than a little fed up with the prospects of an International Conspiracy (I hate International Conspiracy as Tolkien despised allegory: "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence") - the book started to lose me, and never really got me back. I finished it - but it was a long slog. I read a review that referred to Clark as an unreliable narrator: quite right. While he doesn't necessarily intentionally lie to the reader, he makes wild assumptions, changes his mind, and becomes somewhat unhinged. That reviewer had a time of it with the mid-19th century language; I didn't find that nearly as difficult as I often do (it's usually harder to read pseudo-19th-century than the real thing, I find). That was the least of my problems with the book. On the whole, I'm glad I read it. I learned a good deal - for one thing, I'm going to try very hard to avoid referring to Poe as "Edgar Allan Poe", as he hated it, with good reason. (Or he might not have; I'm told that's a myth. Which calls into question every single other thing put forward as fact in the novel. Which is troubling.) For another, it took the taste of that other Poe/Barnum book out of my mouth; there's a certain irony in this book rehabilitating the name of Poe for me as Clark fought to do in Baltimore. And I'm going to read Poe, soon. But I don't think this will come up for a reread very soon. It felt disjointed in places, and as though Pearl lost the reins for a while and was a passenger in a runaway carriage: as if Pearl's research into Poe and his death created in him much the same condition as he describes in Clark. Method writing? Maybe. The Poe Shadow both explained and created allure about Poe, and raised Poe in my estimation while, sadly, lowering Pearl a notch or two. But this didn't kill my respect; on the contrary. I did love Dante; I do respect the tremendous amount of work that went into making The Poe Shadow - and his third, latest book is The Last Dickens (Drood!). I look forward to it. I hope it's more like the first book than the second ... ~Stewartry
El autor estructura la novela en cinco partes o libros como él los llama según va avanzando la investigación. Se desarrolla en dos escenarios distintos; Baltimore(la mayor parte) y París.Comienza en Baltimore, el 8 de Octubre de 1849, fecha del entierro de Poe. El protagonista, un joven abogado llamado Quentin Clark lo presencia por casualidad. Sin saber de quién se trata, de repente, le invade una inexplicable tristeza al ver la pobre sepultura que está recibiendo. Cuando se entera por los periódicos de la identidad del fallecido, empieza a obsesionarse por esclarecer la muerte de su poeta favorito. Quien mejor para encontrar la solución al misterio que Dupin, o más bien la persona que inspiró a Poe para crear su personaje.A partir de ahí, comienza la búsqueda en París de este peculiar detective que lo acompañará en el resto del libro y que juntos intentarán arrojar un poco de luz a este misterio. Pero no lo harán sin antes superar en el transcurso de la investigación, todo tipo de obstáculos.Debo decir que gracias a esta novela me he interesado en el poeta, escritor y crítico literario Edgar Allan Poe. Como persona y escritor. Sobre todo, por los relatos protagonizados por C. Auguste Dupin, personaje de ficción y pieza clave también para esta novela.Más que thriller histórico como señalan en la contraportada del libro, lo he considerado una novela histórica con dosis de suspense. No ha sido de esas novelas que te mantienen en tensión todo el rato y en la que estás totalmente inmersa. En mi caso, la he encontrado bastante interesante. Más desde el punto de vista histórico que desde el punto de vista de la trama, que aunque esté muy bien elaborada y con algunos giros que mantienen el interés del lector, en algunos capítulos la lectura se me ha hecho densa y algo repetitiva.Cuando mejor he saboreado esta novela ha sido después de terminar de leer la “Nota Histórica” que Matthew Pearl ha escrito al final. Después de tres años de trabajo de investigación no me ha extrañado en absoluto. Creo que no es aventurado decir que si no ha dado con la clave de la misteriosa muerte del poeta, es el que más se ha acercado. Trata de los detalles sobre la muerte de Poe recogiendo los más auténticos, combinados con descubrimientos originales que previamente nunca se publicaron. Todas las teorías y análisis relacionados con la muerte de Poe que aparecen en este libro se basan en hechos históricos y pruebas sólidas. Además, me ha encantado saber que exceptuando al protagonista Quentin Clark y los dos personajes candidatos a ser el modelo de referencia que Poe tomó para crear a Dupin(Auguste Duponte y el Barón Claude Dupin), los demás personajes existieron en la vida real. Tampoco puedo hablar de esta novela sin mencionar la aparición en ella de la rama baltimorense de los Bonaparte, la cual desconocía y ha sido otra de las cosas que esta lectura me ha enseñado.Un libro recomendable que sobre todo gustará al lector de Edgar A. Poe.
What do You think about The Poe Shadow (2006)?
Akhirnyaaa... aku selesai melahap buku 'sexy' setebal hampir 800 ini...Genre detektif memang kesukaanku. Kalau ditambah dengan unsur sejarah, lebih menantang lagi. Apalagi sejarah itu tentang seorang yg punya nama nesar di dunia kesusasteraan dunia: Edgar Allan Poe. Hampir semua unsur di buku ini adalah fakta sejarah. Penulisnya, Matthew Pearl hanya merangkai berbagai fakta, data, opini dari berbagai sumber untuk membentuk sebuah penalaran yang masuk akal. Yang bukan fakta adalah tokoh2 sentralnya: Quentin Clark, sang pengacara pengagum Poe yang ingin membersihkan nama baik Poe, dan 2 role-model karakter Dupin dalam novel detektif Poe: Auguste Duponte dan Baron Dupin. Meski hasil rekaan, ketiga tokoh tadi diambil dari gabungan karakter beberapa orang yg secara nyata dihubungkan dengan misteri kematiannya. Ada banyak orang yang mungkin adalah role-model Dupin, namun tentu saja yang tahu hanya Poe sendiri...Aku tadi bingung, mau memberi bintang 3 atau 4 untuk buku ini, mengingat terjemahan dari Q-Press yang masih belum bagus, meski tetap tidak mengurangi rasa maupun isi buku ini, hanya kadang kurang tepat saja. Yang mengganggu justru typo di sana-sini (kalo ini mungkin bukan cerita baru ya..). Anyway, akhirnya aku tetap memberikan 4 bintang, karena, hei...siapa yang peduli dengan typo kalau ceritanya sendiri memang bagus? Toh akhirnya hanya getaran dari cerita itu yang masih menggema di hati, sedang ejaannya sudah gak ditoleh sama sekali deh...Asyiknya lagi, proses penalaran terhadap misteri kematian Poe didasarkan pada karakter Poe yang diambil dari buku-bukunya. Jadi saranku, kalo mau baca buku ini, paling tidak bacalah dulu beberapa kisah detektif Poe.Review lengkapnya, tunggu di blogku ya...
—Fanda Kutubuku
Decepcionante, y más tratándose de una novelización sobre la vida de uno de mis autores favoritos. Estilo narrativo bastante mediocre en una buena idea temática y biográfica; pero Poe se merecía una mejor narración y trato. A partir de la encarcelación del protagonista, el relato se convierte en una narración febril e improbable. La aclaración final del misterio es un poco rebuscada, especialmente la trama del poder de Francia. Lo mejor es su estupenda documentación, siendo la mayoría de los personajes reales; pero es poco balance a favor, una lástima.Mi nota: 5.
—Fausto
I enjoyed Dante Club (I like historical fiction) and so was looking forward to reading The Poe Shadow--I even bought it in hardcover, which is rare for me. Well, it was terrible. Quite possibly the worst book I've ever read. It was totally unclear to me what was going on--was he crazy or was all this stuff really happening to him? I was hoping it would be brilliantly explained at the end so I kept trudging along even though it was beyond tedious. There was no payoff in the end. It was so bad that I was mad when I finished. It literally put me in a bad mood. It's about a Baltimore lawyer who's obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe and how he died--he wants to prove to the world that Poe wasn't really a drunken lout who died on the street and so he sets out to prove a vast conspiracy while ruining his life. It's not clear whether he's crazy or misunderstood. Has anyone else read it? Am I missing something? Is it so profound that I just didn't get it?
—Catherine Bracy
