On the trip to Los Angeles, I finished reading The Club Dumas. I read it basically because I was totally amazed by Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate. Many people disagree with me on that point. To me, the movie was great - it was completely engrossing, filled with great European scenery, interesting characters, a puzzling mystery, moments of hilarious campiness, and moments of bizarre creepiness, and a wonderful original score. And it really had a love of old books.
The book was very good itself, and reading it I understood how the movie brilliantly adapted it, fusing two storylines into one, with the best elements from each. Well, except for the book's character of Flavio, who was hilarious. The other plotline in the book was about a handwritten chapter of Dumas' The Three Musketeers.
The plot was very clever, and certain elements felt like they were from the pen of Stanislaw Lem (my favorite author). If there was a flaw to this book, it was that some of the expositions about Dumas felt a bit extraneous.
Posted by ahyatt at December 1, 2003 11:40 AM