The Dante Club: A Novel Book

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The work of Dante was virtually unknown in this period of Boston's history except by the very few and equally few well educated. It was considered modern, controversial, and an affront to the classics that were taught at institutions like Harvard University. And then there is The Dante club whose members include Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell who are in the process of bringing out the first English translation of Dante's work for American readers. Powerful forces such as Harvard, amongst others, are against it, nevertheless the group proceeds week by week and level by level through the world of Dante as they prepare their publication. The process is closely guarded with their publisher knowing the full contents of their progress and other confidants having only the knowledge that their work proceeds.

But prior to publication meticulous Dantean murders occur, but knowledge of the translation is not well known, it is not even complete, and yet the murders are carried out with an exactitude that only a scholar of Dante's work would have access to. And just as Dante fits his punishments to a crime of specificity, this murderer too follows the famous work in the most exacting detail.

These are the circumstances that author Matthew Pearl arranges in his debut work, "The Dante Club", and the tour he takes readers upon is literate, well-constructed and erudite. The author was honored in 1998 when he was awarded The Dante Prize for his scholarly work by The Dante Club of America. This is a novelist that has the credentials to effectively combine his formal education in Dante with great skill as a writer of fiction.

There are many new authors that debut every year. There are far fewer who will return a second time, or even if they do will have their subsequent work noticed. I believe Matthew Pearl will be the exception. He is no one trick wonder, and no sophomore jinx awaits him either. He is very bright, as his accomplishments at Harvard and Yale have demonstrated, and he is most capable with a pen as, "The Dante Club" has shown.

Read this young man's first work, you will have the experience of excellent writing, a wonderful use of your reading time, and the pleasure of having discovered this young author on his first venture in to the eye of the public.