The Dante Club

“John Kurtz, the chief of the Boston police, breathed in some of his heft for a better fit between the two chambermaids.  On one side, the Irish woman who had discovered the body was blubbering and wailing prayers unfamiliar (because they were Catholic) and unintelligible (because she was blubbering) that prickled the hair in Kurtz’s ear; on the other side was her soundless and despairing niece.  The parlor had a wide arrangement of chairs and couches, but the women had squeezed in next to the guest as they waited.  He had to concentrate on not spilling any of his tea, the black haircloth divan was rattling so hard with their shock.”

Being a lover of Dante, this book drew me merely with its title.  Plus, I haven’t had a real good literary murder mystery in a while and it seemed like a good read.  Set in Boston in 1865, a group of literary giants has taken it upon themselves to translate The Divine Comedy in to American English for the first time.  The Dante Club includes Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, J.T. Fields (a publisher), James Russell Lowell, and George Washington Greene.  They are meeting with considerable consternation and opposition – mainly from the halls of Harvard, still a religious school at this point and vehemently against anything Catholic.  As they begin to translate the third book – Inferno – two prominent men in Boston are murdered horrifically and violently, and in ways which mirror the torments for specific sins in Dante’s nine circles of hell.  The city’s first black police officer, Nicholas Rey, is assigned to assist the chief of police in these cases and holds a key piece of evidence with no frame of reference.  The Dante Club takes it upon themselves to help the police as much as possible without becoming formally involved for fear of having Dante banned by Harvard.  As they do their best to catch the murderer before the police, they throw themselves and their loved ones ever deeper into harm’s way.

 

Now, going into this book, I expected several murders but I did not expect them to be so graphic and explained in such detail.  I’m not sure why it surprised me, considering how terrible the torments in the Inferno are.  It did take me aback, and force me to read the book slower than I normally do – bits and pieces at a time so that I didn’t get too freaked out before bed or too grossed out to go on at all.  This mystery novel dances along the line of being just a little too much for me.  As for the mystery part – I’m usually pretty good at figuring out whodunit, but this one had me totally stumped.  Which is a good thing, right?  My only other complaint is that some of the characters were so similar that I began to get them confused with others, but that might be my own fault as opposed to the author’s.

 

If you are a big Dante fan and a big mystery fan, this might be a good book for you to check out.  Just be forewarned that when the author says brutal murders, he means brutal.  And described fully.  But overall a great book.

 

“The Dante Club” was written by Matthew Pearl and published in

The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi’s Venice

“For the hour it took the baby’s wails to run their course through misery to fury to exhaustion, no one though of anything but how God had favored Venice above all other cities.  The radiance of the Blessed Virgin and all the saints emanated from one spot, the balcony over the altar of the chapel of the Pietà.  From there, benediction flowed over the black-cloaked nobles seated on the scarred wooden benches to the ragged workers crammed in at the rear.  It filtered out the door to the people spilling onto the walkway of the Riva degli Schiavoni, and to those straining to hear on small boats bobbing in the Venetian Lagoon.

For that hour, heaven opened and God spoke.  Two dozen women in red and white dresses were his messengers.  No counterpoint, however frantic or interlocked, was beyond the skill of the musicians of the Pietà, hidden behind an iron grille draped in black gauze.  No subtlety of harmony was overlooked, no languid musical line ever rushed.  If music were fabric, that of the figlie di coro would be brocade, lace, gossamer.”

This is a story set in the age of Venice when music and art were everywhere.  Two sisters, Maddalena and Chiaretta, are abandoned by their mother to the Pietà, one of four orphanages for girls in Venice.  The pair are raised behind closed doors, with Maddalena as a violin prodigy and Chiaretta as an astounding singer.  However, beyond the music, the sisters are as different as black and white.  Chiaretta is beautiful, outgoing, and longs to find a life outside the walls of the Pietà where she’ll be admired and surrounded by finery.  Maddalena is introspective, a great lover of losing herself in music, and lives only to play her violin and be with her sister.  When the red priest , Vivaldi, becomes one of the instructors, he and Maddalena form an instantaneous attachment to each other through the music, and though their relationship cannot proceed beyond anything else, they begin to form a bond that will last until death.  Chiaretta works to become the premier vocalist of the Pietà, to protect her sister, and to find happiness wherever she can.

 

It’s hard to tell if this is a story about Maddalena, Chiaretta, Vivaldi, or the music itself.  The entire novel is written like a musical number – points and counterpoints, the stories of the sisters’ stories playing off of each other and intermingling with that of Vivaldi’s as he becomes inspired and works on his greatest compositions in “The Four Seasons.”  We are allowed to see events unfold from both the point of view of Chiaretta, and of Maddalena.  Each one faces her hopes, her goals, her reality, her love for someone else, and overall the necessity for music in their life.

 

The gorgeous thing about this story is that you need not know a single thing about music in order to feel the melody of this story.  You can sense the great love of music, and impossibly beautiful music at that, which each of the characters holds within them.  Whether they are heartbroken or uplifted, the music is always there alongside them – bringing them closer to each other or to God.  This novel is as much a testament to the pristine power of the written note as it is to the written word.

If you couldn’t tell, I loved this book.  I appreciated that it was more than a story of two orphaned sisters growing up, and more than a love story.  It was more than a book about the composition of a great piece of music and more than a forbidden romance.  The combination of all these put so flawlessly together was an impressive work itself, and I highly recommend this novel.

“The Four Seasons” was written by Laurel Corona and published in 2008.

Devil May Care

“It was a wet evening in Paris.  On the slate roofs of the big boulevards and on the small mansards of the Latin quarter, the rain kept up a ceaseless patter.  outside the Crillon and the George V, the doormen were whistling taxis out of the darkness, then running with umbrellas to hold over the fur-clad guests as they climbed in.  The huge open space of the place de la Concorde was glimmering black and silver in the downpour.”

This is one of the newest books in the James Bond series – written by Sebastian Faulks, who is a famous modern novelist.  I am not an enormous Bond fan, but I do enjoy reading the books about him every once in a while.  Kind of like I enjoy a big cup of cider sometimes.  Not all the time, and just because at the time it sounds enjoyable.

This Bond novel finds 007 on a mandatory sabbatical after a rough assignment.  He is lounging around in Paris, trying not to work and very nearly failing.  When M calls him back after MI6 is alerted to a frightening new player in the illicit drug market.  Julius Gorner is a man with a passion for opium and all of its derivatives, not for personal pleasure but as a business investment.  Bond is assigned to learn as much about him as possible.  Along the way, 007 picks up a woman (of course) whose sister has been taken captive by Gorner – the lovely Scarlett Papava.  Unsurprisingly, what Bond learns about Gorner shows there is much more to be concerned about than simply the increase in opium sales.  Gorner has plans to change the face of the planet forever, and will kill anyone who gets in his way.  Which is precisely where 007 is standing.

It’s definitely not to be disputed that the 007 novels are cheesy in the best sense of the word; elaborate plots, cool gadget weaponry, beautiful and willing women, and a main character that oozes cool.  They are novels written for men and play to every weakness of the male gender.  This book is no different.  However, it was a bit rough for me to grasp that this was still taking place in the 1970’s.  I’m not sure if it was balancing between the new Bond movies set in the present and the book, or if it was the writing style of Faulks.  Something kept making me feel it was set in present day.  Other than this, Faulks’s homage to Fleming is flawless.  He completely understands Bond and can tell a dramatic suspenseful spy story with the best of them.  It’s slightly less tongue-in-cheek, with action every other page and a willingness to harm any and every character.  If you enjoy the rest of the novels about 007, you’ll enjoy this one.

“Devil May Care” was written by Sebastian Faulks and published in 2008.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

“It goes by many names: ‘The Crisis,’ ‘The Dark Years,’ ‘The Walking Plague,’ as well as newer and more ‘hip’ titles such as ‘World War Z’ or ‘Z War One,’ I personally dislike this last moniker as it implies an inevitable ‘Z War Two.’ For me, it will always be ‘The Zombie War,’ and while many may protest the scientific  accuracy of the word zombie, they will be hard-pressed to discover a more globally accepted term for the creatures that almost caused our extinction.  Zombie remains a devastating word, unrivaled in its power to conjure up so many memories or emotions, and it is these memories and emotions, that are the subject of this book.”

When it comes to the zombie section of sci-fi/horror, there is very little to entice me to want to have anything to do with it.  Everyone has that one thing that makes them a little nervous – or terrified – depending on our personality.  And for me, that thing is zombies.  However, since I do enjoy a good play of “Left 4 Dead” once in awhile, and I don’t hate “Shaun of the Dead,” I figured I could probably handle this book.  I’m not so sure that was a correct assumption, but I am still glad I read it. If only because it taught me how woefully unprepared my household is in case the dead ever rise to attack us and eat our brains.

This book is a conglomeration of stories from all over the world roughly 10 years after victory was declared over the zombie uprising.  From the early years and the vague mysterious source of the plague, to the ways it spread so rapidly, how it affected those in denial, our pathetically unprepared military systems, the ruthless methods used to weed out the infected from the safe and to protect those in power, and the steps certain individuals took to ensure the survival of the human race itself.  From a unscrupulous doctor to a commander of a Chinese nuclear submarine, to a movie producer and a blind man who killed hundreds of zombies while stranded in a national park – all of the stories weave together to portray as complete a picture of World War Z as one could ask for.

While it’s obvious this book is fiction, I happen to think that if for some reason there ever were a zombie uprising, it’s a fairly accurate representation of what the world would do.  Most people wouldn’t believe what was going on until too late, there would be criminals who took advantage of the situation, governments would respond with words and not enough power, or vice versa, and lots and lots of people would die.  The one place I believe this is lacking is covering the hundreds of thousands of people who play video games with zombie-killing that would respond enthusiastically by purchasing shotguns, making up molotov cocktails, and wielding baseball bats to take down as many undead fiends as possible.  And I can tell you that after this book, I’m definitely picking up another of Max Brooks’s works – The Zombie Survival Guide.

“World War Z” was written by Max Brooks and published in 2006.

Austenland

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a thirty-something woman in possession of a satisfying career and a fabulous hairdo must be in want of very little, and Jane Hayes, pretty enough and clever enough, was certainly thought to have little to distress her.  There was no husband, but those weren’t necessary anymore.  There were boyfriends, and if they came and went in a regular stream of mutual dissatisfaction – well, that was the way of things, wasn’t it?  But Jane had a secret.”

My best friend has been recommending this book ever since she discovered it.  She’s a librarian, so that was probably immediately after it came out two years ago.  She knows me pretty well, especially when it comes to books.  And she was dead on with this recommendation.

Jane Hayes has had (in her mind) 13 boyfriends in her life, none of whom have met her expectations as to what a boyfriend should be.  Unfortunately, her ideal man is none other than Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice.  And not only Mr. Darcy, but the Colin Firth version of Mr. Darcy.  She has a hidden copy of the mini series on DVD which she pulls out regularly to get her Darcy fix.  And she’s nearly resigned herself to the fact that she will never find Mr. Darcy and should just settle for whatever comes along next when a distant relative passes away and leaves her an all-expenses-paid trip to Pembrook Park.  Pembrook is an English resort which caters to the Austen-obsessed, fully immersing them in the world of Regency period England; complete with costumes and etiquette requirements.  Jane is face to face with her lifelong obsession with all things Darcy and, not sure what’s real and what isn’t when it comes to relationships at Pembrook, grows more and more exasperated with the men there.

This is every woman’s dream come true.  Well, every woman who has ever found themselves longing for their own Mr. Darcy (especially the Colin Firth Mr. Darcy!).   Jane provides the perfect everywoman as a character – the rational mind trying to outdo the emotional heart, second-guessing her every decision, and allowing her fancies to get the best of her at times.  We travel along with her as she tries to escape her obsession and relationship issues, finally coming to terms with her Darcy fetish.  All I can say, is that if you love anything Austen, you’ll want to grab this book.  I’m tempted to add it to my own personal collection, and consider myself a bit indebted to my friend for her fantastic recommendation.

Shannon Hale wrote “Austenland” and it was published in 2007.