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A provocative literary thriller that playfully pays tribute to classic tales of mystery and adventure Lucas Corso is a book detective, a middle-aged mercenary hired to hunt down rare editions for wealthy and unscrupulous clients. When a well-known bibliophile is found dead, leaving behind part of the original manuscript of Alexandre Dumas'sThe Three Musketeers, Corso is brought in to authenticate the fragment. He is soon drawn into a swirling plot involving devil worship, occult practices, and swashbuckling derring-do among a cast of characters bearing a suspicious resemblance to those of Dumas's masterpiece. Aided by a mysterious beauty named for a Conan Doyle heroine, Corso travels from Madrid to Toledo to Paris on the killer's trail in this twisty intellectual romp through the book world.… (more)
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From my own perspective, The Club Dumas is notable for being a modern novel to involve the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Pérez-Reverte's protagonist Lucas Corso is a broker of rare books and manuscripts. Besides the explicit mention of a 1545 (second edition) Hypnerotomachia (47-49), it is apparent that Poliphilo -- as well as H.P. Lovecraft's imagined Necronomicon -- has influenced Pérez-Reverte’s conception of his plot-crucial imaginary grimoire, the 1666 De Umbrarum Regni Novem Portis, with its offensiveness to Christian sensibilities, provocative woodcut illustrations, impenetrable text, and Venetian origin. The novel includes the illustrations, which are richly iconic Tarot-like images.
But all that is within the plot-line harvested for The Ninth Gate. At the same time, Corso in the novel is involved with an attempt to locate an alleged fugitive original manuscript of a chapter from The Three Musketeers, and it is the phenomena of textual obsession, multiple authorship, and criminal intrigue that tie the literary and occult halves of the story into a braided whole. The novel is lively, not dense: a genuine pleasure read for the bookish.
The author knows how to
Sometimes I wonder whether literary critics praise works heavy with literary allusions just because they are afraid they otherwise would be thought as ignorant of the classical tradition. This book is not meta-literature or literature that merits place as part of intertextual conversation. It is fraud. The author is a mercenary in words. The one star might be merited by the fact that the books shows how empty both story and language is if the author does not, as Dumas did, know how to play by the rules. D´Artagnan in the hands of Perez-Reverte is as twisted and fallen as the valuble collection of books the villain in this story, Varo Borja, ruins at the end of the book in order to put up the circle he needs to summon the devil. And the murders committed? - they do not count for much - A kind of poetic justice is fulfilled then, when neither does Perez-Reverte´s attempt to assassin "The Three Musketeers".
A fun read blending book culture (both literature and craft of printing),
Now I've read the novel, I'm certainly more interested in the Depp/Polanski movie The Ninth Gate, though I'm not persuaded a film treatment, even a good one, would bring something to the story not already in the book. For one thing, the metafictional aspects would be misleading in a film, or at least become an altogether different element. Perhaps the plates from De Umbrarum Regni Novum Portis could be presented in a striking manner. However, the nine plates were reproduced / illustrated in the edition I read, along with some tabular figures used to summarize the differences across the 3 copies of the book (differences key to the steganography utilised by the author). The illustrations fit the style of the book as well as the requirements of the plot quite handily.
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Three libraries feature in the story:
Varo Borja's fictional library of the devil contains several authentic titles, unclear whether any are Pérez-Reverte's invention or if they are perhaps all gleaned from history. [53-57]
Borja's library has a twin, that of Victor Fargas's library of the occult / esoterica:
... a great many books, five hundred or more, Corsa estimated, maybe even a thousand. Many codices and incunabula among them. Wonderful old books bound in leather or parchment. Ancient tomes with studs in the covers, folios, Elzevirs, their bindings decorated with goffering, bosses, rosettes, locks, their spines and front edges decorated with gilding and calligraphy done by medieval monks in the scriptoria of their monasteries. [143]
And then, the mountebank author and baroness Frieda Ungern's "research library" housed with the Ungern Foundation, "the largest collection in Europe of books on the occult ... and one of the best catalogues of demonology". [219ff]
The only interesting part was the one about Dumas and the serial novel genre and this says a lot about a book that was supposed to be a fast-paced thriller.
The Club Dumas, by Arturo Perez-Reverte, follows Lucas Corso, as he tries to authenticate an original manuscript of a chapter from The Three Muskateers at the same time as he is comparing the three remaining editions of The Nine Doors, a 1666 book on the devil. Corso is
This was an excellent book with many interwoven layers. On the face of it, The Club Dumas is a mystery novel. Corso is attempting to discover who is responsible for the strange events and deaths that he encounters. On another level, Perez-Reverte is exploring the innocence and knowledge, death and redemption of the soul.
And yet another layer examines the relationship between the author and the reader. And in the end, this is the layer that intrigued me the most. Balkan, the professor with whom Corso consults about the chapter from The Three Muskateers), sums it up this way: "Listen, Corso, there are no innocent readers anymore. Each overlays the 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. . . . The information a book provides in an objective given. It may be presented by a malevolent author who wishes to mislead, but it is never false. It is the reader who makes a false reading" (p. 335). Corso, as the "reader's representative" in The Club Dumas, misreads the signs throughout the course of the novel, leading him to assume the wrong intentions of just about everyone around him.
Characters: The characters are a little hard to get into. Side characters are sketched with plenty of stereotypes; the central character remains quite colorless and bland. Too much telling, not enough showing.
Style: This is the book's strong point. Lots and lots of references and in-jokes to other books and writers. A lot of information (real and made-up) on demonological literature and old books in general. The prose itself is nothing extraordinary, but the passages where characters talk about books are very well done.
Plus: The in-jokes for bibliophiles.
Minus: Too many scenes, plot twists and characters could have done with more fleshing out. As it is, the narration is often too brief and thus confusing.
Summary: No Eco, but an easy-to-read, entertaining adventure with intriguing book-related gossip on the side.
Corso is a small man, wears rumpled and scuffed clothes, wire rimmed glasses, carries a large canvas bag that is frequently stuffed
He is hired by a client to research the book “The Nine Doors,” written in the 1600s. There are only three copies left in the world, and the question is to locate them and determine which if his copy is true or a forgery. He is also hired to authenticate pages from “Le Vin D’Anjou” (The Pear Wine), purported to have been written by Alexandre Dumas.
What he finds is a plot involving devil worship, a cast of characters straight out of “The Three Musketeers,” and the deaths of the people he visit to get his information on “The Nine Doors.” It seems he has two mysteries to deal with at the same time.
Quotes and references to the history of various books run through the whole book. It puts me in mind of Dan Brown’s books. With such information, I took my time reading it, and enjoyed it.
This is a book for lovers of books. It contains a mystery within a mystery. It contains a plethora of literary references, past book printing and binding techniques, historical information about the life of Alexander Dumas, and an in-depth examination of the characters in The Three Musketeers. This book requires active engagement by the reader and is not a quick read. It is an elaborate puzzle, and the reader will need to pay close attention to details, especially early in the story, as these come into play later on. Though the author provides context, to get the most out of this book, it is helpful to have somewhat recently read The Three Musketeers.
I enjoyed the portions about Corso traveling around Europe to immerse himself in ancient book collections. Once it gets to the possible connections to the occult, it gets a little outlandish. Do not be surprised if it is difficult, if not impossible, to solve the mystery before being provided a large amount of information near the end.
3.5
There is a second plot line that is part of the reason for the confusion. In his attempt to authenticate the Dumas manuscript, he comes across another work – The Nine Doors. This red herring … or is it? … centers on satanic rites and devil worship. The twists and turns, intersecting vs parallel paths, insights and missteps all help to confound the reader’s attempts to solve the puzzle before Corso does.
It’s an adventure tale, a murder mystery and a morality play all at once.
The book abounds with literary references, mostly to the work of Dumas, but also to other works. I was reminded of The Shadow of the Wind, although THIS book preceded Zafon’s novel by nearly a decade.
Life interfered with my ability to read this work continuously, so I was forced to stop and then pick it up a few weeks later. I’m sure than affected my rating. I enjoyed it, but didn’t love it.
This is a book for bibliophiles; there are numerous references to real books and many books invented just for this story. I think the story would have seemed richer to me had I a knowledge of ‘The Three Musketeers’ and other Dumas works.
The plot has so many twists and turns that I had a hard time keeping it all straight in my head. I had a big problem with the book in that I found Corso to be completely unlikable. He’s so completely self-serving that I just could not find him sympathetic. Irene Adler is a cipher; to the end we never find out who she really is. I found the endings to both plot threads rather unsatisfying. I admit that the book held my interest right up until the end; the book references, talk about how literary forgeries are done, and the history used in the story were fascinating.
Anyway, what we have here is excellent. A real book for book lovers, with ancient books, autograph manuscripts and instructions on how to forge them; an interesting mystery with surprises and a shed load of very clever and at times very funny post-modernist jokes, all handled as apparently they can be only by continental Europeans.
Although you'd never know it from the title, The Club Dumas was the basis of the movie The Ninth Gate, directed by Roman Polanski and staring Johnny Depp. Although the movie removed an entire plot line from the book, it was well done (except for the last 5 minutes) and is one of
I recommend it for what it is: well researched and imagined, light, summer fare.
It is a typical "dude-lit" thriller - sprinkled with some
However, the protagonist - Lucas Corso - is quite a fun fellow to take us through the motions. His mercenary lifestyle as a book dealer makes for entertaining reading, and his "inner turmoil" albeit a bit cliche for the genre, is quite touching at times.
The language is often terribly cheesy... There are several over-the-top descriptions such as "her blue eyes were as warm as a Scandinavian fjord at three in the morning" and a female character's hips are likened to the midnight sun that never sets and can bear little blond Erics and Siegfrieds. Furthermore, there is constant mention of pretty female legs and busts along with non--stop referrals to the protagonist's drinking habits. Yes, we get it - he drinks gin. A lot.
On the other hand, the descriptions of book collecting, classic novels and the way such are preserved were quite interesting. Reading about incunabula, woodcuts, Moroccan leather and parchment versus linen, one gets the urge to reach in and take a feel and have a sniff of this world. I learned a lot of trivia - such as the fact that current cellulose books don't last much more than 60 years!
All in all, a decent thriller with the expected "unexpected" twists and turns. I saw the Roman Polanski movie based on part of this novel right afterwards, and even though it stars everybody's favorite actor, Johnny Depp, it is quite bad. I would recommend the book - even though it is best suited in a cheap paperback binding...
There was a movie based on this...The Ninth Gate, but skip it and read the book. If you've read Dumas, you will really appreciate what's going on here. If not, well, you'll learn something.