No sabéis el alivio que ha supuesto terminar este libro, se me ha hecho eterno. Y haber estado dos semanas sin poder leer tampoco ha ayudado.

Tenía muchas ganas de que me gustara, la sinopsis prometía, pero cuanto más avanzaba más disminuía mi interés en la trama. Raro en mí, tratándose de Poe y habiéndose documentado tan bien el autor (la mayoría de sucesos y personajes son reales), pero no he conseguido conectar con el libro a pesar de intentarlo cada vez que me ponía con él.

No sé si le daré una segunda oportunidad de aquí a un tiempo, cuando lea más a Poe, pero está claro que a día de hoy no ha sido lectura para mí.

Una de las peculiaridades de la vida es que, por lo general, las historias de quienes ya no están entre los vivos son las que encierran la verdad...

2.5 stars.

I finished the book! I can't believe I finished it! This is a major deal for me, because I've had this book on my shelf for around 8 years now, and I've always put it off. I don't really know why, because I'm a fan of Edgar Allan Poe. Maybe it was the mystery element, something I don't really tend to read in fiction. Anyway, I finally knuckled down and finished this book, so finally I am in the position to write a complete review.

The Poe Shadow follows the endeavors of Quentin Clark, a young Baltimore lawyer in the 1800s, to discover what happened in Poe's final days. As a dedicated fan of his work, having corresponded directly with him several times, the impression that people have of Poe dying as a drunkard, enrages and troubles him. Clark sets out to clear Poe's name and relate the true events, by travelling to Paris to find the inspiration for Poe's character C. Auguste Dupin. However, a nefarious Baron may well put a spanner in the works.

This novel is first and foremost a mystery novel, but on the other hand it is almost a work of literary fiction in that it deals so much so with character motives, political intrigue, and of course literature itself. The prose is written in a somewhat Victorian style - this may be due to the fact that it is set in the Victorian era, but as it is set in America and not Britain, this is debatable. Although I felt the novel was well-written, it was a little laborious to read at times because the pace was incredibly slow. This may well be more realistic, as a mystery surely would not be wrapped up toute suite, but it doesn't exactly capture my excitement and attention as a reader.

The main issue that I had with The Poe Shadow however was that it just wasn't that interesting to me. Quentin Clark is a very unsympathetic character - he may be incredibly driven and passionate about his quest, but it is at the expense of everything and everyone else in his life. I found myself being constantly frustrated with him and his perpetual naivety. I didn't really warm to the character of Auguste Duponte either - he was eternally cryptic and closed off, and I felt like he was meant to be portrayed as a Sherlock Holmes type of character, albeit with a lot less charisma. I felt that the plot dragged on considerably, and not enough happened until Part 5 of the book (the final part, I might add). Although the villainous characters were quite charismatic and interesting, I felt they weren't even present enough to make me care enough about the plot of this novel.

If you are a fan of Edgar Allan Poe, and a fan of mystery novels, then I would recommend you maybe give this a shot. The fact that a great many of the characters and details surrounding Poe's final days in this book were factual is an interesting element to this, and something I was not aware of while reading. Although the investigation itself is fictional, it was satisfying to find out about many people involved with Poe's last days in the novel were in fact truly involved, and I felt I had learned something from it. However, I would not read it again as it was far too slow-moving for me.

Whie the majority of the novel is fascinating with the main character's obsession of finding out what really happened to the tragic death of Edgar Allan Poe and he risks losing his true love, job and inheritance in pursuit of that goal, the ending falls flat. The four-star rating is when our hero goes to Paris to find the real-life person that he believes Poe wrote about in his novels.
The ending is so convoluted and flat that neither the author (nor evidently the publisher) could write a scenario that made sense as evidenced by page 357 footnote " if I am to relate future revelations, touching on this point, it must be at a site far more private." Poe's death raises far more questions than answers but for pure Poe fans, is great fun.

A 300+ page framing device for his personal research and interest into the death of Edgar Allen Poe. Full of false promises, an unlikable and unreliable narrator that we are forced to trust due to the publisher promised "answers to Poe's death" and little closure at the end. The whole thing seemed a self indulgent excuse for why the author himself had wasted his life researching Poe- making "purpose" out of his research by publishing it as a piece of historical fiction. "See mom and dad!? You aren't wasting your money on seemingly endless years of grad school! I published a book that has a blurb by the Da Vinci Code guy! Dolla-dolla bills!!" The characters all were merely props for the disappointing "big reveal" at the end. Had I only been better at ratiocination, I could have deduced that the book was awful and saved myself the effort.

The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl

No aspect of his life has so fascinated Poe’s readers as his death. Unfortunately, what is known is confusing and baffling. Shrouded in opinion and contradiction, the essential details of Poe’s final days present more questions than answers. The facts surrounding Poe’s death must, probably, after more than 160 years, remain a mystery — but it is a puzzle that still teases and entices those who find Poe’s writings and life enigmatic and incomprehensible. The Poe Shadow is a terrific depiction of this mystery and of Poe’s fate.

Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849 at the Washington College Hospital in Baltimore. The events surrounding his death have remained an enigma. In the early morning hours of October 7, Poe calmly breathed a simple prayer, "Lord, help my poor soul," and died. His cause of death was ascribed to "congestion of the brain." No autopsy was performed, and the author was buried two days later. In dying under such mysterious circumstances, the father of the detective story has left us with a real-life mystery which Poe scholars, medical professionals, and others have been trying to solve for over 150 years. The Poe Shadow constructs "an intriguing chain of theories" (The New York Times) using new and definitive evidence in a rational, convincing, and enthusiastic theory of Poe’s last days.

The Poe Shadow reveals, deliberates, and evaluates existing circumstances and evidence as well as new information that has not been known until this books. In the weeks before his death, Poe asked his aunt Maria Clemm to send him a letter to Philadelphia addressed to "E. S. T. Grey," precisely at the same time a letter from Maria Clemm addressed to Poe under that name would have arrived at the post office. This was likely the last letter sent to Poe in his lifetime. The existence of this waiting letter has never before been known, and this list is reprinted for the first time in The Poe Shadow, where its implications are explored and the reasons why Poe used this alias in this final days are finally revealed.

Poe had plans to Philadelphia to edit a book of poems by a writer named Maurgerite St. Leon Loud. Poe died, but Loud ultimately did publish her poetry book in 1851, two years after Poe’s death. Identified for the first time in The Poe Shadow, "The Stranger's Doom" may be the first poem ever written about Poe's funeral. What it reveals about Poe's death is uncovered in The Poe Shadow.

All we know is that on October 3, Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore , "in great distress, and ... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died at 5 a.m. on Sunday, October 7. Poe was never coherent enough to explain how he came to be in this condition.

Much of the information that we have had about the last few days of Poe's life came from the doctor who tended him during his last days, Dr. John Joseph Moran, though his credibility is questionable. Theories as to what caused Poe's death include suicide, murder, cholera, rabies, syphilis, influenza, and that Poe was a victim of cooping, a practice in which unwilling participants were forced to vote, often several times over, for a particular candidate in an election. given alcohol or drugs in order for them to comply. If they refused to cooperate, they would be beaten or even killed.

What is known is that on September 27, 1849, Poe left Richmond, Virginia, on his way home to New York. His whereabouts between that day until a week later on October 3 are unknown, when he was found delirious in Baltimore. He was cared for by Dr. Moran at the Washington College Hospital. He was denied any visitors and was confined in a prison-like room with barred windows in a section of the building reserved for drunk people. Moran claimed he attempted to cheer Poe up during one of the few times Poe was awake. When Moran told his patient that he would soon be enjoying the company of friends, Poe allegedly replied that "the best thing his friend could do would be to blow out his brains with a pistol."

Shortly after his death, an obituary which disparaged Poe’s reputation appeared in the New York Tribune signed "Ludwig," and was soon published throughout the country. The piece began, "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it." The author was Rufus Wilmot Griswold, an editor and critic who had borne a grudge against Poe since 1842. Griswold somehow became Poe's literary executor and, in a campaign to destroy his reputation after his death, Griswold depicted Poe as a depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman. Much of the evidence for this image of Poe is believed to have been forged by Griswold, and though friends of Poe denounced it, this interpretation had lasting impact.

One theory as to the cause of Poe’s death was reached through an analysis almost 147 years after his death. Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center believe that Edgar Allan Poe may have died as a result of rabies, not from complications of alcoholism. Poe's medical case was reviewed by R. Michael Benitez, M. D., a cardiologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center. His review is published in the September 1996 issue of Maryland Medical Journal.

"No one can say conclusively that Poe died of rabies, since there was no autopsy after his death," says Dr. Benitez, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "But the historical accounts of Poe's condition in the hospital a few days before his death point to a strong possibility that he had rabies." "Poe's death is one of the most mysterious deaths in literary history, and it provided us with an interesting case in which to discuss many principles of medicine," says Dr. Mackowiak of the weekly Clinical Pathologic Conference at the medical center.

The Poe Shadow is a novel written by Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club. It tells the story of the quest of Quentin Hobson Clark, a Baltimore young lawyer, to solve the mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s death. It is a work of historical and literary fiction, in which some previously unpublished details about the last days of Poe, as mentioned.

Quentin, a Poe admirer, witnesses a somber, simple funeral on October 8, 1849. When he learns it Edgar Allan Poe’s, with whom he had previously exchanged letters about providing legal support for a new journal, The Stylus, Clark feels obliged to look into the circumstances leading to Poe's death, despite protests from his fiancée Hattie Blum and his friend Peter Stuart.

Quentin's search for the truth takes him to Paris to find the real-life inspiration for Poe's character C. August Dupin, a man of intellect who could help unravel the mystery, just as he did The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, and The Purloined Letter. If the situation weren’t already complicated, Quentin meets Baron C.A. Dupin, a famed lawyer in Paris, and a lone detective with a similar name: Auguste Duponte. After a confrontational encounter with the Baron Dupin and his companion, Bonjour, Quentin realizes that the Baron is not quite what he claims to be and that Auguste Duponte, with his approach to problem-solving through ratiocination, was the real inspired character in the stories.

The two go back to Baltimore to investigate the final days of Poe before his death, only to find that the Baron and Bonjour have been on the same track, if not ahead, of solving the same investigation. The two pairs interview the funeral attendants, witnesses, and secretly rummage Henry Reynolds, a funeral attendant, who obtained a written letter from Poe the day he was found in the streets of Baltimore. Other mysteries unfold through Clark’s mission to clear Poe's name from disgrace continue on to a surprising judgment on the death of Poe, possibly the most important Gothic fiction writer of American literature.

Auguste Duponte and Baron Claude Dupin can be seen as doubles or doppelgangers, and the book discusses Poe's use of doubles in works such as "William Wilson," a tale that features two identical characters with the same names. The word "shadow" is used in many different ways in the novel. Clark tells us, "Poe once wrote in a tale about the conflict between the substance and the shadow inside of us. The substance, what we know we should do, and the shadow, the dangerous and giggling Imp of the Perverse, the dark knowledge of what we must or will do or secretly want. The shadow always prevails."

Back in Baltimore, Quentin finds that the Baron and Bonjour have followed Auguste and himself from Paris and are promoting the Baron as the true Dupin. Quentin finds himself entangled in ominous intrigues involving political agents, the corrupt Baltimore slave trade, and the lost secrets of Poe’s final hours. With his own life in danger, Quentin Clark must turn master detective to uncover the threat against his now jeopardized destiny.

Following his phenomenal debut novel, The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl has once again crossed created a literary history with inventive mystery to create a cunningly plotted tale of suspense. Pearl’s pioneering research which uncovered documented material never published before opens a new window on the truth behind Poe’s demise. The resulting novel does honor to Poe himself through Pearl’s skillful craftsmanship, sly humor, and crafty plot zigzags.

A final note on Poe - His funeral was a simple one with few people attending the ceremony. Poe's uncle, Henry Herring, provided a simple mahogany coffin, and a cousin, Neilson Poe, supplied the hearse. Moran's wife made his shroud. The funeral was presided over by the Reverend W. T. D. Clemm, cousin of Poe's wife, Virginia. The entire ceremony lasted only three minutes in the cold, damp weather. Reverend Clemm decided not to bother with a sermon because the crowd was too small. One attendee wrote of the weather: "It was a dark and gloomy day, not raining but just kind of raw and threatening." Poe was buried in a cheap coffin that lacked handles, a nameplate, cloth lining, or a cushion for his head.

Poe was reburied on October 1, 1875, at a new location close to the front of the church. A celebration was held at the dedication of the new tomb on November 17. His original burial spot was marked with a large stone donated by Orin C. Painter, though it was originally placed in the wrong spot. Walt Whitman was the only poet to attend. Alfred Lord Tennyson contributed a poem which was read at the ceremony:
Fate that once denied him,
And envy that once decried him,
And malice that belied him,
Now cenotaph his fame.


Death Theories
The following is an annotated list of some of the theories of Poe's cause of death that have been published over the years:
•tBeating (1857)
The United States Magazine Vol.II (1857): 268.
•tEpilepsy (1875)
Scribner's Monthly Vo1. 10 (1875): 691.
•tDipsomania (1921)
Robertson, John W. Edgar A. Poe A Study. Brough, 1921: 134, 379.
•tHeart (1926)
Allan, Hervey. Israfel. Doubleday, 1926: Chapt. XXVII, 670.
•tToxic Disorder (1970)
Studia Philo1ogica Vol. 16 (1970): 41-42.
•tHypoglycemia (1979)
Artes Literatus (1979) Vol. 5: 7-19.
•tDiabetes (1977)
Sinclair, David. Edgar Allan Poe. Roman & Litt1efield, 1977: 151-152.
•tAlcohol Dehydrogenase (1984)
Arno Karlen. Napo1eon's Glands. Little Brown, 1984: 92.
•tPorphryia (1989)
JMAMA Feb. 10, 1989: 863-864.
•tDelerium Tremens (1992)
Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar A1lan Poe. Charles Scribner, 1992: 255.
•tRabies (1996)
Maryland Medical Journal Sept. 1996: 765-769.
•tHeart (1997)
Scientific Sleuthing Review Summer 1997: 1-4.
•tMurder (1998)
Walsh, John E., Midnight Dreary. Rutgers Univ. Press, 1998: 119-120.
•tEpilepsy (1999)
Archives of Neurology June 1999: 646, 740.
•tCarbon Monoxide Poisoning (1999)
Albert Donnay

Once upon a time in high school (yes, high school) I read and loved Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club enough that I picked up Pearl's next book, The Poe Shadow, from a second hand shop at a point when I had too much homework to read anything for fun, and gave The Dante Club 5 stars when I got a Goodreads account about 6 years later.

This year, as I've been trying to weed out my book collection, I've realized that my reading interests have drifted from when I was buying books that I had no time to read to today. Hence my desire to dip into my older books when looking for a Halloween read.

So my reading experience could be as much a product of my changing tastes and interests as the quality of this book itself. Here's how the experience went, approximately:

25 pages in: Why is this guy so obsessed with Poe? And why is he so indifferent to his life-long presumed fiance?

50 pages in: Is this plot even moving?

75 pages in: I should probably stop. I've been trying to be better about that.

100 pages in: I think the plot just started.

150 pages in: I tell a coworker I am going to stop reading the book.

200 pages in: I complain to Areg and say I should stop reading the book.

250 pages in: I buy a few used books and put one in my field of vision as incentive to finish this book. Why am I even bothering to finish this book?

300 pages in: Why did I stick with this book so long? I'm so close to the end, it feels pathetic not to finish.

354 pages in (today): I nod off during the climax.

367 pages in: I read a fascinating 3-page afterword that thoroughly impresses me with the author's research and realize I'd much rather have read this as a nonfiction book.

It's not like it was bad, I just didn't enjoy it, and I don't know why I forced my self through it.

Plot (and lots of spoilers):

Quentin Clark, fan of Poe's exchanges a couple letters with him. When Poe dies and the press drags his name through the mud, Clark is enraged and tries to clear Poe's name by finding answers. Things happen, but nothing really seems to happen. He neglects his job and his supposed love. He learns that Poe's detective, C. Auguste Dupin of "The Murders on the Rue Morgue" and a few other stories, is based on a real person and faffs off to Paris to find said person and convince him to solve the mystery of Poe's death. Clark's main suspect, Duponte, is a retired police officer who resolutely does nothing, so Clark follows him around Paris doing nothing and trying to nudge him into helping. There's also a dashing lawyer "the Baron" Dupin who claims to be Dupin and wants to clear Poe's name to restore his own. Baron Dupin happens to have a sexy assassin wife whose only flaw is a scar on her face.

All four return to Baltimore, where Baron Dupin loudly proclaims he's going to solve the mystery and sells tickets for the day he announces his conclusions. Duponte tells Clark he will, but it's been two years since Poe died so he's not going to ask anyone because their memories will be corrupted by now. Again, Duponte sits around and does a lot of nothing but reading newspapers, so, for some reason, Clark does a lot of the same. Sometimes he goes off and Does Things but Duponte always tells him why those things were pointless. Nevertheless, Clark talks to people and learns even more good things about Poe. He absolutely detests Baron Dupin to an extent that is as baffling to me as his obsession with Poe is. Clark talks to someone else who almost ruined their life with their love of Poe. Apparently liking Poe and his work ruins people? Because, yeah, Clark's quit his job and his fiance says she's happy to be marrying his friend instead of him.

There is so much busywriting (like busywork: plotless writing instead of pointless work) that happens and so little of it amounts to anything. Duponte dismisses it all and none of it seems to build to anything of importance. There are tons of characters who speak Poe's praise to Clark but won't say anything publicly and who don't ultimately matter. Baron Dupin decides he wants to look like Duponte--I don't remember and can't be bothered to look up why--and he is a master of disguise so he makes it happen. Clark somehow gets accused of murdering Baron Dupin onstage on the night of his big reveal even though he was onstage where surely everyone could have seen that it wasn't him.

And then Duponte goes missing, presumed murdered by the sexy assassin; Clark goes crazy, actually by the doing of the sexy assassin; then goes on the lam and realizes that Dupin is just entirely made up and not based on anyone and instead stumbles onto a huge French conspiracy that has nothing to do with Poe and is taking place entirely offstage as President Napoleon stages a coup and becomes Emperor Napoleon. This barely-relevant, barely-mentioned piece of plot gets revived and Poe's basically out the window. The divorced American Bonapartes wanted to curry favor with the French Bonapartes by killing Duponte so that he couldn't expose the coming coup--but why the heck would anyone care about Duponte, when he had been in disgraced retirement with no signs of interest in going back to work? For a book chock-full of apparently true historical tidbits, the lameness of this is just...disappointing.

Oh, and apparently Clark's just magically off the hook for murder but a relative has decided only now that his obsession with Poe is proof that he is too mentally unstable to maintain the family estate, and somehow defending his good name in court will get him back the girl who somehow still cares about him even though he literally kept just forgetting to ask her to marry him even though she was turning into an old maid. Clark finds out Duponte isn't really dead, he just used Baron Dupin's desire to look like him to "become" the dead sleuth's older brother to hide from the Bonapartes who he somehow suspected of wanting to kill him in case he ever decided to come out of his house and care about the world again. As one does. And then Duponte decides to have someone fire a gun in the middle of the court case to clear the courtroom so that he can privately lay out for Clark in excruciatingly slow detail how Poe's death was just a series of unfortunate events. Even though Clark has been insistent for, like, 50 pages that the only way to prove his sanity is to pass off Baron Dupin's undelivered, over-the-top-ridiculous (and real) theories about Poe's death as his own, Clark decides not to say anything about Poe one way or another and still somehow saves his reputation and gets the girl.

And then I got to the end and just wondered why there was so much fat on what should have been a novella, or a nonfiction book about Pearl's very convincing and much less sensational arguments about what happened to Poe in his final days.

I'm not even glad it's done. It just is.

Anyway, time to move on to that book I was using to bribe myself...

Matthew Pearl's The Poe Shadow is the first book I've read in a while that I did not like at all. The premise is interesting; a contemporary of Edgar Allen Poe attempts to discover what happened in the final days before the poet's death. Pearl had written the moderately entertaining The Dante Club prior to this, and I had expected to see the improvement that often comes with an author's sophomore effort. Instead, Pearl only manages to serve up a snooze-fest.

To begin with, Quentin Clark is the most unsympathetic and annoying protagonist I have ever encountered. He throws away his job and his fiance at the merest whisper of a conspiracy. He's obsessed with Poe beyond all rational thought. After abandoning his fiance for over a year and a half, he's stunned to discover she's been betrothed to someone else. He creates adversaries where there are none. By the time the book ended, I was more than ready to be done with him and never hear from him again.

The other characters do not fare much better. Their motives are cloudy, at best. I could never quite understand why people were behaving as they were. Everyone was dramatic and over-the-top, and I couldn't identify anyone that I even liked.

The mystery itself doesn't propel itself forward very well, and there's simply too much muddled stuff in between Poe's death and the final resolution of what happened to him. Although I appreciate the historical analysis, of which the author did much, it's not presented in an interesting way.

If you're a diehard Poe fan, you might enjoy this take on the poet's life and death. Otherwise, I can't think of a reason I'd recommend this book to anyone.

My final review for June is The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl, a book I bought last year because I liked the cover and the title. It's the same superficial reason I used for Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann and for the most part, my intuition paid off for both.

Edgar Allen Poe showed up unexpected and in a confused state to the Washington College Hospital in Baltimore. He died there on October 3, 1849. Before his death he called out for a person named Reynolds and a letter was sent to a Dr. Snodgrass on Poe's behalf asking for help. Poe was given a simple burial and only managed to achieve recognition as a great American writer after his death. Those are the facts and the starting point of The Poe Shadow.

Matthew Pearl creates a fictional überfan, Quentin Hobson Clark, who happens on Poe's burial and feels compelled to solve the mystery behind the writer's death. He puts his own life on hold to track down all of the leads no matter how tenuous. He even goes to France with the idea of finding the man behind Poe's fictional detective, Dupin.

For the most part I enjoyed Pearl's odd mixture of fiction and historical fact but things go awry in the last third of the book. The book starts off so focused on the facts of Poe's life and death that as the plot snowball rolls towards near pure fiction the book seems to lose direction and credibility. The book falls into many of the same traps as The Seven-per-cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer.

I went from enjoying a historical fiction mystery to wishing the darn thing would end. I stopped counting possible reasons behind Poe's death at after the third rehashing of the last days of his life because it was too late in the game for an homage to Roshomon.

My over all impression of the book is still one of enjoyment but it needed tighter editing in the last 100 pages.

On Oct. 7, 1849, a little-known poet and author of strange gothic tales died in a Baltimore hospital. He had been found, disheveled and injured, in an alleyway. After his death, a small funeral was held at a small Baltimore Presbyterian church. A total of four people attended.

The man's name was Edgar Allan Poe.

The true events leading to the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe remain a mystery to this day. No one knows what he was doing in Baltimore, as he was supposed to be in New York at the time.

There is also the question as to his condition: clearly intoxicated, which was not that odd, considering Poe had been a notorious alcoholic for much of his adult life. What was odd was that months before he had joined a temperance organization, completely sworn off all alcohol, and had, according to friends and acquaintances, been succeeding in living a new life of sobriety. No one knows what happened in the four days prior to his death, although there were many speculations.

Matthew Pearl, the author of "The Dante Club", has written a fictionalized account of the missing last four days of Poe's life in "The Poe Shadow". It is painstakingly researched, although it is, alas, merely fiction.

Pearl's protagonist is a Baltimore attorney named Quentin Clark who inextricably becomes entangled in the mystery of Poe's death. He may have been the last person to have corresponded with Poe, a man he had never met in person but with whom he shared a kindred spirit in Poe's macabre but mind-expanding poetry and fiction.

After seeing how the media was defaming Poe's name, Clark vows to find the truth about Poe's death, a quest which quickly becomes an obsession, and a quest that becomes a journey to Paris, France, where he enlists the aid of the one man who might possibly be able to solve the mystery: a private detective name Auguste Duponte, the real-life basis for Poe's classic fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin.

Fans of Poe will appreciate the many literary references that abound in Pearl's novel. Part historical account, part murder mystery, and part literary criticism, "The Poe Shadow" is a brilliantly conceived novel that is as fun to read as it is fascinating and moving in places.

Poe was a complicated man in life, but it was only after his death that people began to appreciate the complexities in his literary work, an appreciation that has made Poe one of the best-loved writers in the American canon.

I didn't love this book, but I did admire the ambition of it. And Pearl's other books, trying to make a popular audience for all the old figures of literature. But the best thing about this book is that it took me back to a couple of Poe stories -- which were great! Here's a thing I wrote:

https://annarborobserver.com/articles...

Despite all the bad reviews that this book had, I decided to read it and give it a chance. I was really really excited to read something about life -in this case, death- of Poe.
I started reading with many expectations and at first I thought it was interesting, but then ... The main character, even though history says that is not about him at all, never stops talking about himself, his life, his feelings, how good it is, etc.. and that's pretty tired and makes you hate the character, and I ask... Where on earth was Poe's story? I mean, It's not about Quentin! Because in that case the book will be called "Quentin's shadow"
Also, there are parts where the action is terribly slow and there is no action, but then becomes faster and faster and the words seem to be written in a hasty and meaningless way.
Moreover, the obsessive addiction has Quentin by Poe has no basis and his search is a little bit stupid in parts.

However, I must admit that some facts about Poe's life were interesting, but that was the only good book. I definitely do not recommend it!

El autor estructura la novela en cinco partes o libros como él los llama según va avanzando la investigación. Se desarrolla en dos escenarios distintos; Baltimore(la mayor parte) y París.
Comienza en Baltimore, el 8 de Octubre de 1849, fecha del entierro de Poe. El protagonista, un joven abogado llamado Quentin Clark lo presencia por casualidad. Sin saber de quién se trata, de repente, le invade una inexplicable tristeza al ver la pobre sepultura que está recibiendo. Cuando se entera por los periódicos de la identidad del fallecido, empieza a obsesionarse por esclarecer la muerte de su poeta favorito. Quien mejor para encontrar la solución al misterio que Dupin, o más bien la persona que inspiró a Poe para crear su personaje.
A partir de ahí, comienza la búsqueda en París de este peculiar detective que lo acompañará en el resto del libro y que juntos intentarán arrojar un poco de luz a este misterio. Pero no lo harán sin antes superar en el transcurso de la investigación, todo tipo de obstáculos.

Debo decir que gracias a esta novela me he interesado en el poeta, escritor y crítico literario Edgar Allan Poe. Como persona y escritor. Sobre todo, por los relatos protagonizados por C. Auguste Dupin, personaje de ficción y pieza clave también para esta novela.
Más que thriller histórico como señalan en la contraportada del libro, lo he considerado una novela histórica con dosis de suspense. No ha sido de esas novelas que te mantienen en tensión todo el rato y en la que estás totalmente inmersa. En mi caso, la he encontrado bastante interesante. Más desde el punto de vista histórico que desde el punto de vista de la trama, que aunque esté muy bien elaborada y con algunos giros que mantienen el interés del lector, en algunos capítulos la lectura se me ha hecho densa y algo repetitiva.

Cuando mejor he saboreado esta novela ha sido después de terminar de leer la “Nota Histórica” que Matthew Pearl ha escrito al final. Después de tres años de trabajo de investigación no me ha extrañado en absoluto. Creo que no es aventurado decir que si no ha dado con la clave de la misteriosa muerte del poeta, es el que más se ha acercado. Trata de los detalles sobre la muerte de Poe recogiendo los más auténticos, combinados con descubrimientos originales que previamente nunca se publicaron. Todas las teorías y análisis relacionados con la muerte de Poe que aparecen en este libro se basan en hechos históricos y pruebas sólidas.
Además, me ha encantado saber que exceptuando al protagonista Quentin Clark y los dos personajes candidatos a ser el modelo de referencia que Poe tomó para crear a Dupin(Auguste Duponte y el Barón Claude Dupin), los demás personajes existieron en la vida real.
Tampoco puedo hablar de esta novela sin mencionar la aparición en ella de la rama baltimorense de los Bonaparte, la cual desconocía y ha sido otra de las cosas que esta lectura me ha enseñado.
Un libro recomendable que sobre todo gustará al lector de Edgar A. Poe.