Last week I was browsing in a local book store looking for Japanese novels and a new to me Atwood and I saw The Club Dumas and I bought it.
There is a genre of literature called "chick lit". I do not use this term normally as I do not like the expression. The Club Dumas then sort of falls in the category of bookish boy's lit. The characters in the novel are all very into the works of Alexandre Dumas, mainly The Three Musketeers. There are several female characters in the book. They all seem to find a man who can recite the plot of The Three Musketeers completely impossible to resist and have nearly to be restrained from removing their clothes at the sight of a musty old French novel no one out side of The Sorbonne would ever have heard about. One of the women is a kind of Nordic looking Anna Nicole Smith widow whose wealthy much older husband hung himself under mysterious circumstances. The book dealer came to visit her as her husband had a very valuable book collection as we are told book collections are normally sold very soon after the collector dies. It turns out the widow is very into old books herself. In the mind of the book dealer, the widow is having problems controlling herself in his presence. We are given references also to a lot of occult knowledge, burning candles in the middle of pentagrams type stuff. Of course this sort of occult knowledge is central to the bookish boy's genre and plays right into his fantasy world. The book dealer later will establish a relationship with a beautiful eighteen year old woman who is also dazzled by his erudition and knowledge of occult lore.
I know all this makes The Club Dumas seem a bit silly and it is in fact more than a bit silly. Having conceded this it is also kind of fun. (Here I am acknowledging that at 12 or so I was a very bookish boy who thought The Count of Monte Cristo was the height of culture). I think if you pushed this book and analyzed it closely it might well fall apart. The occult information conveyed is pretty shallow and could be learned by watching some vampire type TV shows. The female characters are pure bookish boy fantasy stereotypes. There are a lot of comments about books and the reading life of the characters, some of which are interesting. We also learn somethings about old books as regards their physical properties. The book is ok escapist reading for bookish boys and those who used to be a bookish boy. I think if I were in an airport and had forgotten to bring a book with me and saw another book by Perez-Reverte in the newsstand and could not find anything else to buy I would buy another of his books. The ratings on goodreads.com go from those who thought it was pretty much completely silly to those who felt it was a really interesting and intelligent look into a world most of us know little about. The plot action does have a lot of twists and turns. I did not find any of the characters interesting. I liked Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game much more than The Club Dumas but I was able to finish it. I am glad I satisfied my curosity in reading this book but I do not see it being liked by a lot of readers of my blog.
