The Dante Club

Read early last year, riveting to the end, a definite page turner


Just finished, dimmed by a loose plot, slow tempo and extraneous detail


Yet to read

I just finish reading The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl. I have high hopes for this Poe tale after reading Pearl's debut novel The Dante Club last year. It is such an engrossing read. The lingering magic of the book has sparked my interest in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, especially how the book is parallelled against it. I have read its entirety, the Paradiso, Purgatorio and Inferno.

The Poe Shadow on the other hand has been quite disappointing. I guess the most difficult endeavor for every writer is to live up to the expectations of an earlier success. The Dante Club has been a sensation, so much so the best selling author Dan Brown is cited on the book cover touting "Matthew Pearl is the new shining star of literary fiction...with an immense gift for intricate plots."

The Poe Shadow attempts to solve the mystery surrounding Edgar Allan Poe's death and his last days leading up to it. The fictional character Quentin Clark is an attorney consumed with a desire to pursue the truth of Poe's demise in order to vindicate the slanderous rumors that Poe has died a delirious drunkard. Clark's belief that Poe has modeled the crime solving genius C. Auguste Dupin after a true person takes him to Paris to find the elusive character in Poe's tales.

The story is circuitous with two supposed Dupins going round and round with hypothetical conjectures and Clark endlessly combing through newspaper articles with any mentioning of Poe. This onslaught of facts, dates, places and details makes you wonder where it is heading. Meticulous research has gone behind it but the facts are just too crowded, slowing the tempo of the whole work. The Poe Tale is at best a narration of facts which has neglected the most compelling element of a novel, that of storytelling.

As for The Dante Club the plot structure and tempo is akin to The Da Vinci Code. The story follows a chain of murders mirroring punishments in Hell depicted in Dante's Inferno. Set in nineteenth century Boston, the Dante Club is made up of a circle of famous scholars, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russel Lowell and J.T. Fields.

The success of the book lies in Pearl's ability to flesh up every character, both real and fictional. As opposed to the factual narration in Poe's tale, this is story telling. The urgency to solve the murders is matched with the furious obsession of Longfellow and the Club members to translate the Inferno. The tightness of the plot compels you to piece the puzzle alongside the characters, eavesdropping in Longfellow's study for hunches and clues.

Fictions based on historical facts and real characters are extremely challenging where a fine balance hangs between research and imagination. It behoves to remember that with novels, readers are looking for a good story rather than pure research.

Online Shopping

This is an Agnes b. card purse I have bought online. I have never purchased anything except books online because of my suspicions that I might be cheated. How ironic when I have an online website for my cards!!

I decide to try it out at a local auction site and after looking through dozens of pages I am utterly frustrated. Whoever says shopping is a great past time is definitely wrong here. I simply want a card purse, how hard can that be? I choose the vendor with the highest ratings, confident that I have a found a bargain.

It's only a day's wait. I open the package and pat myself on the back for being such a savvy shopper. I decide to show off my prize to the expert online shopper at the cafe. Big mistake. I have bought the purse for double the price she has paid for exactly the same piece!! Thunderstruck, I ask her isn't this the price you tell me couple days ago? With one hand on her hip, she says, "it's for two, stupid". Dang!!

The vendor has given me an A+++ shopper rating, an A+++ idiot to be precise. I have reciprocated the rating upon receiving my package. I am now surrounded by advisers who console me there is a first with everything, that everyone makes mistakes and practice makes perfect. Gee!! How much do I have to waste and pay for a lesson well learnt and that lesson is shopping??? I am right in being wary about online shopping, it's not for idiots like moi. Sigh.

I love my purse though!!

Baby Carnations

Baby Carnations

I have had Kobe's ashes with me since he pass away on November 7, 2007. A few months ago, I decide to sprinkle his ashes on the Peak, the place he loves most, running in the grass and slurping on vanilla milkshake afterwards. By the time he finishes his two spoonfuls, he is a mini Yorkie after all, he would sport a vanilla moustache and beard. He is the cutest baby.

I would regularly get baby carnations and place the tiny vase beside Kobe's photo. Merlyn talks to him every day while dusting and cleaning. Every now and then I would see tears welling up in her eyes when she comes out of my room. Each month on the 7th we would light a white tea light candle to remember him, though he is in our hearts every day.

We always buy from the alley flower stall and the grandpa who mans the stall would unfailingly remind us not to put too much water in the vase because the stems will rot. He says a few drops of kitchen bleach mixed in the water will make the flowers last longer.

A couple days ago, I pass by his stall with Porky on our way to the supermarket. We stop to say hello and while chatting he asks if I have fallen out of love with carnations. While spilling out Kobe's story grandpa keeps nodding and sighing. After I finish he says in the language of flowers carnations represent remembrance. He then gives me a stem of carnation and says should I go to the Peak to visit Kobe, be sure to let him know so he could save the yellow ones for me.

It is a bittersweet moment and I can feel my eyes brimming with tears. Kobe my baby, I hope you are healthy and happy in doggie heaven looking over us. I love you and miss you. Mommy.

Naps

I am not a napping person. The rare times I do will see me waking up with a headache and numbed the rest of the day. Plus, sleeping during the day feels lazy and overindulgent. However, I find myself taking more naps these days. It never occur to me that writing is so draining. After hours at the computer I feel my brain has emptied out and I will be in a trance of sorts.

Doing mindless activities like watching TV, surfing the Internet or flipping glossy magazines do not help. Well then, I figure doing something productive can definitely take me out of this lull. Clinging my paperback I flip to the bookmark page and read. I will be totally engrossed in the first few pages, but soon enough I begin to lose focus, my eyelids get heavier by the minute and before I know it I am in la la land.

Amazingly my naps these days do not have the after effect of headaches. I wake up feeling refreshed and more alert. The naps are never more than thirty minutes since I'll be jolted awake by the kids, either the cats jumping on me, Dayee screaming or Porky wanting to get down from the bed.

Gone is the guilt. I now look forward to my naps as a recharging routine.