Wendy DeCora.com

I started this book the day before Hurricane Katrina hit and I don’t know if it was some weird mental state about that event that I tied to the book or what, but I just could not get into or finish this book. But being one of those people who won’t abandon a book she starts, I slogged through this for book for nearly two months. The story should’ve been interesting. Its about a series of murders related to the punishments from Dante’s circles of Hell. The main characters are literary and historial people from the post-Civil War era and based in Boston. People like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Longfellow and other people who I recognize but that I could never keep straight through this whole novel. I guess the reason I kept reading was because I wanted to know who had done it. But even that answer felt empty and a bit contrived. Apparently it was the author’s, Matthew Pearl, first novel. Maybe that was the problem or maybe I should just blame the weather.