The West Range, Room 13 -- mystery surrounds this glass-encased room, where Edgar Allen Poe lived during his brief tenure at the University.
Poe was a typical student. The public, however, would come to view him as a mentally unstable drunk, his writings absurd and morbid. The Poe Shadow, by Matthew Pearl, delves into the mystery surrounding Poe and his death that came some 20 years after attending the University.
The year is 1849, and Poe's recent passing has sent the narrator, Quentin Clark, into an emotional frenzy. The press has used Poe's death to further degrade and criticize the author, and Clark, a Poe fanatic, is determined to bring honor back to Poe's name and his literary works. He is convinced that the only way to solve the mystery of Poe's death is to use one of Poe's own literary characters.
Enter Auguste Duponte, a Frenchman with Sherlock Holmes-esque reasoning and manner. Clark believes him to be the real-life model for one of Poe's fantastical and brilliant detectives, C. Auguste Dupin. Together they embark on an adventure to bring closure to the famed author.
Despite being a fiction novel, The Poe Shadow is loaded with historical juice. Pearl's ability to seamlessly blend fact with fiction sets his novel apart from typical mystery novels. He has taken what little facts are known about Poe and created an intriguing and even plausible account of his death. Knowing that the novel was based on reality brought an entirely new element to the narrative. I was no longer just reading a novel; I was solving a real-life mystery.
The mystery kept the pages turning, but it was the main characters who breathed life into Pearl's story. Quentin Clark was just plain likeable. His eagerness to please others was infectious. I couldn't help rooting for him as he struggled to balance his passion for Poe and his former life. The no-nonsense Frenchman, Auguste Duponte, creates the perfect contrast to Clark's exuberant emotions. Blunt and introverted, Duponte used only strict logic and reasoning to piece together the last days of Poe's life.
Together they form the perfect mystery-solving duo.
The novel's secondary characters, however, are hugely underdeveloped. Clark and Duponte's rivals, Baron Dupin and Bonjour, constantly dart in and out of the storyline. Pearl attempts to establish a back-story for them, but he never follows through. Other characters are just thrown in at the end, as if Pearl needed a quick fix to his elaborately created mystery. Plenty of mystery novels use this technique, but it still left me yearning for something more.
Even so, The Poe Shadow is still an intriguing read. If nothing else, Pearl has created a unique look inside the life of a University alumnus.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
