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I'm almost done with it, and it has failed to grab my interest and I can't figure out why. I enjoyed Matthew Pearl's first novel, The Dante Club. I expected to like this book even more because this one is about Poe, a writer a love to read. (Not about him, exactly, but related to him...if you've read the book, you know what I mean, and if not then this question isn't for you anyway). It has a lot of ingredients that would normally pull me in: an obsessive character who may or may not be going mad, spying and intrigue, plenty of dark atmosphere, good old Sherlock Holmes-style sleuthing. These are all things I typically go for. On top of all that, the book does a very good job staying true to Poe's work stylistically.
So why do I not care about this story? Why am I just reading it now out of a weird, OCD sense of responsibility to finish what I read?
If anyone else read this one, how did you feel about it?
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