Recently I read The Club Dumas, the book that The Ninth Gate is based on. The Ninth Great is a wonderful, atmospheric movie starring Johnny Depp. I enjoyed the movie and I previously read The Rule of Four, another bibliophile thriller, so I wanted to check out the inspiration of the film.
The Club Dumas is a hard book to review. I don’t read as much fiction as I used to, and Dumas (which a blurb calls a cross between Umberto Eco and Anne Rice) isn’t a typical beach book. So instead I will just give some impressions:
One character, very minor at the beginning and quite important at the end, is Satan. Satan is proud, and pride is the worst of all sins, because of all sins, only pride leaves the sinner all alone:
I don’t know why you keep talking to me as if I were one of many. I’ve been alone for a long time.
The Club Dumas is an excellent book, almost meta-fiction, and a great read. I bought it for a penny used from Amazon. Highly recommended.
