I really hated the book the Club Dumas.
This is one of the few cases in history of the movie being better than the book, and naturally I'd say that about pretty much any movie version of a book if the movie version involves Johnny Depp, which in this case it does, but in this case it's not just the sexy, sexy Depp factor that makes the Ninth Gate a much better movie than the Club Dumas is a book. I really enjoyed the Ninth Gate. It was slow and calm to watch, but quirky as hell just under the surface, like Polanski movies are. It was a decent story, well-shot, well-acted, satisfying ending. So, armed with the common knowledge that the book is always better than the movie, I eagerly purchased the Club Dumas at a bookstore at Pearson airport a couple of summers ago while making my annual pilgrimage to the Mysterious East (Nova Scotia).
By the way, there will probably be spoilers for both book and movie farther down, so you may want to stop reading now. Or there may not be, it's not like I put any thought or planning into these things before I write them.
I got to reading, and made an exciting discovery: there was an entire second plotline that hadn't been in the movie at all, about Alexandre Dumas, the Three Musketeers, and the Satanist society that uses the book of the Nine Gates (the society, and obviously the book were in the movie, but the Alexandre Dumas story was not). That explained the title at least. Boy, was I ever giddy with happiness and insecurity. Surely the two stories...the search for the three last copies of the Nine Gates and the gradual revelation of Dumas' devil-worshipping and possible credit-stealing...were going to intertwine in some fascinating way that would have me bemoaning my sluggish, third-rate brain for not being able to think up something nearly as clever, thereby sealing my fate to remain a mediocre pulp hack for the rest of eternity.
Not quite.
It was a good book, really. I had such high hopes. Nicely atmospheric, pretentious as a poet at Starbucks, but that wasn't really a surprise, given the subject matter. Overall enjoyable, until the last fifty pages or so. The grand climax hit, and gosh, it sure was neat, but something was wrong. The whole Dumas story seemed to have flatlined about twenty pages earlier, and one of the main characters (Irene Adler, guardian angel and token love interest) was standing around and doing nothing. I don't just mean that you didn't hear about her doing anything during the high drama resolution of the search for the Nine Gates, it's just that what you did hear about her what that she was standing by the window of the castle and looking bored. Okay. So, where was the rest of the story?
There was no rest of the story. The Dumas story never concluded. And, as it turned out, it had nothing to do with the primary story of the search for the Nine Gates.
Nor, it turned out, did Irene Adler. In fact, one of the last scenes in the book had Corso and Irene driving around in a fancy convertible and laughing about how the search for the Nine Gates had absolutely nothing to do with her. And we never do find out what exactly made her important beyond being Corso's occasional guard dog and sex toy, in which case making the character an actual dog would have been much more interesting. Or certainly uncommon. Whatever gets the reader's attention.
My hands were shaking as I closed the book the book and put it down. I looked at it lying on my bed, and thought that maybe if I clapped my hands three times or something, it would jump up and act out the rest of the story.
No such luck, though my mother mentioned something after dinner that night about maybe having me tested for autism when we got back to Toronto.
Had I really just read that?
I love books. I am very nice and gentle with my books. I won't let any but a select few individuals borrow my books, because I don't trust everyone to take care of them properly. And some of my books I won't even let out of my house. You want to read my copy of Phantom by Susan Kay? No problem. I'll just handcuff you to the radiator in my kitchen, place the book on a book stand no less than twelve inches away from you, and you may turn the pages only with a pair of sterilized tweezers that I will provide. I cry when the cover of one of my books gets bent, or a page torn. I love the damn things.
So, in the name of that love, and my resolve to never do harm, I had to take the Club Dumas to my mother, and ask her to hide it from me. Why? Because I feared I would rip it to shreds. And light the shreds on fire. And then scatter the ashes into the grazing paddock of an alpaca farm nearby.
A few days later, I had mom produce the book again, and we got in the car and drove (fast) to the closest Frenchy's. I didn't even let her slow the car down, I just opened the window and hurled the book out in the general direction of the store. I may have broken one of their windows. I didn't care. I just wanted to get the book out of my sight and out of my presence.
If you see this book, do not read it. Do not let its poison enter your mind.
Watch the Ninth Gate. Feel a greater than usual sense of appreciation for Roman Polanski.
Enjoy the scene where Johnny Depp is only wearing a towel.
Don't read the Club Dumas.
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12 comments:
you have missed the point of the book completely; Irene Adler IS Lucifer...
Someone else tried to tell me that too, and it's now been about two years since I read the book, and I no longer own it, but I really don't recall anything that indicated that at all. I guess to a certain extent, it's obvious, but still not interesting.
Tiffany, I completely agree. Years back I had seen the movie and upon repurchasing it I found myself watching it obsessively.
Inspired by my reanimated love for the film I decided to purchase the book since, as you and I both agree, by default novels are superior to their film counterparts. However as I started to read the book, as witty and deviously intriguing as it may first seem to be, there is something off about the entire story.
The Club Dumas suffers from an over burdened storyline. Had it been longer or the main 'bad guy' more properly developed, maybe just maybe I'd argue differently. The Dumas plot element is promising but at too many moments the reader is left confused and/or benevolent of what is transpiring. Mystery and intrigue are critical elements when dealing with the occult, especially as presented in this story, yet the mystery becomes too mysterious when even Irene seems to be left without answers.
I had better expectations for the novel but where the novel failed the film makes up. And this is why the film wins at the end. The film takes the silence and makes it romantic, takes our questions and makes them impossible to answer but presents us, the viewer/reader, with a possible answer.
In otherwords, the audience has a HINT of what or who Irene is. And what or who Corse is.
Lola, you've expressed how I feel about the book exactly. The book is cleverly, even beautifully written, but unfocused and cluttered.
I wouldn't say that she is LF i would say a fallen angel at most is implemented by the author she is more of a representation of Corso's love life which was non-existent before her maybe the author wants you to believe she is a devil because she is too young for corso or to smart for her age but she is an avid reader and all of her jokes pertain to information that corso is similar with. The ending was the best part in my opinion due to the surprise of the ninth gate being fake, corso able to love again, and the option of filling in your own blanks of what or where corso ends up, I believe with the movie that was what he wanted as the director for the movie to end who is to say that didn't happen corso now knows the secret to the ninth gates why not try it but either way to each his own on his book just thought id put in my two cents.
@Anonymous Pleased to have any opinion, thank you. :) A different view presented.
The book is so much better than the movie! I like both and I love Johnny Depp and Emmanuelle Seigner, but the movie can't do, what the book can.
There are so many allusions of Irene Adler being Lucifer, only a foul can not understand. And, I love girls with short hair... her hair in the movie is much too long ;)
Some of you people need to learn how to spell!
Some of you people need to learn how to spell!
Many people have missed a critical element of the book: it is simply Boris Balkan's pulp literature based (loosely) on what he knows about Corso, his investigations, and The Club Dumas. Reverte gives clues to understand this. In the opening paragraph, Balkan comments on the state of literature, specifically noting that it is a time in which "novels are written by Roger Ackroyd's doctor." Balkan puts himself back into the story in Chapter 5, titled REMEMBER. Beneath the title is a quote from Agatha Christie's THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD. Balkan writes, "this is the second time I enter the stage." If you don't get it, it is Reverte telling us that the story is Balkan's stab at contemporary mystery fiction. Reverte's twist at the end is a little different than Christie's. But that's part of Reverte's wink at the reader too. Reverte tells us at the very end, we'll either get it or we won't. Books play tricks, he says. And we all get the devil we deserve.
How much are we to believe is Balkan actually relating an account of Corso's adventure and how much is Balkan's fancy? Can't know. Doesn't matter. The story is what is what counts, and it is a great story. In the story, Irene plainly is a fallen angel, by the way. She openly reminisces about siding with Lucifer and falling from heaven. Is she the devil Corso deserves? At some level, probably. But knowledge and understanding are also Corso's reward. He laughs at the end, after he has figured out why Borja's pages were wrong. Understanding is the reader's reward too.
Regarding Irene: She is a fallen angel. Is she Lucifer? Or is she one of the angels who fell with him? I've gone back and forth on this. And I'm not committed to one or the other. Having read the passage in which she recalls the fall from heaven about a hundred times, I can see it both ways. She refers to Lucifer as the most beautiful of the angels, and it almost rings of admiration for someone else. She speaks about how much harder it was for those who fell with him, and it kind of seems like she is putting herself in that category. But I could also see that part as her lamenting that she had dragged the others down. "He misses heaven," she says. Boy, I can hear her saying "I miss heaven" when I read it. But doesn't resolve it, does it?
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