⋙ Libro Gratis The Poe Shadow Matthew Pearl 9781400061037 Books

The Poe Shadow Matthew Pearl 9781400061037 Books

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The Poe Shadow Matthew Pearl 9781400061037 Books

I'm a Matthew Pearl fan, and I've given five-star ratings to his other books, but this one isn't quite on a par with them. The main character fails to elicit sympathy from the beginning and never really gains traction. A successful lawyer in Baltimore, he becomes obsessed with the Poe's death and drops out of society to figure it out. If he were a little more mature and balanced we might find something laudable there, but this fellow is self-absorbed to the point of nausea induction and gullible to boot. He chases his tail for the entire book until finally stumbling onto some useful conclusions that you or I would've found at around p. 75.

The other characters also fail to elicit sympathy. You find yourself most of the way through the book looking for someone to root for and there's no one. Add to that a choppy plot with too much going on that doesn't advance anything and you have a bit of a mess. It feels like Pearl didn't know where he wanted to go and his editors never took him out to lunch for a heart-to-heart.

I don't want to over-do it. It's still worth reading, Pearl is a gifted writer and I'm still a big fan, but I found myself wanting to pick up a No. 2 pencil and edit the thing.


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The Poe Shadow Matthew Pearl 9781400061037 Books Reviews

As someone who enjoyed Mr. Pearl's first novel, The Dante Club, a lot and as someone who is a big fan of Edgar Allen Poe, I expected to enjoy this novel a lot. I was even primed for this, having recently read Louis Bayard's excellent Poe novel, The Pale Blue Eye. However, I found this novel to be something of a letdown.

Perhaps I am being somewhat unfair to Mr. Pearl. Bayard's novel was pretty much created out of whole cloth, with Poe as a secondary character and the entire story clearly fictional. This allowed Mr. Bayard to pull out all the stops and create a mystery/thriller of real energy. The Poe Shadow is definitely interesting but it doesn't have the full visceral excitement of The Pale Blue Eye.

The fact is, I think Mr. Pearl is hampered by his extensive knowledge of Poe. He is the editor of Poe's tales (particularly, the Dupin tales) for the Modern Library and the historical note at the end of the book clues us into some of the new research Pearl is revealing in this novel. There is no doubt that Pearl knows his Poe, it just doesn't seem to help his story.

The story is about a lawyer named Quentin Clark who was a fan of Poe's and becomes obsessed about determining the truth behind the events leading up to Poe's death when he observes the author being buried rather unceremoniously in a Baltimore cemetery. He even goes so far as to abandon his practice so he can travel to France and enlist the aid of a Monsieur Duponte who he believes is the real life model for Poe's Dupin character. Along the way he runs afoul of the Baron Dupin (who may be the model for Dupin) and his murderous wife Bonjour. All four seek out the answer to Poe's death back in Baltimore for purposes of their own.

This semblance of a plot allow Pearl to expose all of his knowledge of the Dupin tales and the controversy that still remains around Poe's death. In the guise of fiction he is able to present the various arguments and make sure his belief rules the day. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, of course. I just wanted a more exciting story.

Mr. Pearl's ability to evoke mid-19th century Baltimore is undeniable. The atmosphere of pre-Civil War America comes through on every page and is wonderful. However, his characters often seem like mouthpieces rather than real people, doing odd things that seem compelled by plot rather than personality. The only character that really leaps of the page to me is Bonjour and she is also the one with the most fictional story to tell.

Anyway, it's not a great novel but it's not a bad one. Anyone who adores Poe, as I do, would be foolish to pass it up; however, it's not something likely to appeal to others unlike, say, The Dante Club which did not necessitate Dante fandom to be enjoyable.
Allow me, for a moment, to quote one of the Mr. Pearl's characters in the story "If somebody had edited [the book], heaven forgive them, it was not a poet of experience and strong priciples regarding the brevity and unity of verse, as we know Monsieur Poe to have been". Would that Pearl had followed Poe's lesson.

I enjoyed 'The Dante Club', even though it took time to get going. 'The Poe Shadow' is considerably less enjoyable. It's as though someone took 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', added 500 or so extra pages, and made 85% of those extra pages boring. Not badly written, just dull. It lacks the level of atmosphere and excitement that made 'The Dante Club' so good.

'The Poe Shadow', after a fashion, is a C. Auguste Dupin story, openly so. When mystery is being set up and/or explained, it is as enjoyable as Poe's three tales of the great detective. And when Pearl goes for the horror aspects of Poe, he delivers, But again, there is just too much needless filler to merit more than a three star rating.
I'm a Matthew Pearl fan, and I've given five-star ratings to his other books, but this one isn't quite on a par with them. The main character fails to elicit sympathy from the beginning and never really gains traction. A successful lawyer in Baltimore, he becomes obsessed with the Poe's death and drops out of society to figure it out. If he were a little more mature and balanced we might find something laudable there, but this fellow is self-absorbed to the point of nausea induction and gullible to boot. He chases his tail for the entire book until finally stumbling onto some useful conclusions that you or I would've found at around p. 75.

The other characters also fail to elicit sympathy. You find yourself most of the way through the book looking for someone to root for and there's no one. Add to that a choppy plot with too much going on that doesn't advance anything and you have a bit of a mess. It feels like Pearl didn't know where he wanted to go and his editors never took him out to lunch for a heart-to-heart.

I don't want to over-do it. It's still worth reading, Pearl is a gifted writer and I'm still a big fan, but I found myself wanting to pick up a No. 2 pencil and edit the thing.