“endings” in The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
Posted by Lew Weinstein on April 16, 2007
· unresolved issues. At the end of the book, there are major unresolved issues, which are not even acknowledged by Perez-Reverte. Who is the green-eyed girl? Why does she follow Corso and help him? What happens to Varo Borja, who has committed murders but is not (yet) sought by the police? Is this effective? I find it frustrating. Did I miss something? · two stories. what seems like two unrelated stories intertwined and soon to become a single story ends up to be two separate stories. Perez-Reverte is playing with the reader, which angers me. I came to the end of the book with great anticipation that the threads would be tied up and then felt great disappointment when they were not. · the forged page … At the end of the book, there is an implication that the Ceniza brothers did in fact forge a page, at Corso’s request, thus preventing Varo Borja from achieving his contact with the devil. This page was never shown or mentioned before, or if it was, I missed it. There must have been a better (more clear) way to present this, so perhaps the author wanted it to be unclear, maybe to be thought of long after finishing the book. But he leaves unexplained why Corso would have thought to have the page forged, and for what purpose, at the point in the story when this would have been done? Another frustrating aspect of the ending to this book.
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Abby Watson said
I was so frustrated at the end of hte book! I admit I never got the sense that Corso requested the forging of the 9th tile, only because he had to spend so much time deciphering all the tiles of the 3 books. My frustration came from the “shadow” references at the end. Corso’s shadow. There is something there I’m not getting – it is fleeting. Ghosts don’t have shadows (so I’ve read… I think). Angels don’t have shadows (so I’ve read… I think). Something happened to Corso in the house and he did not come out a live being. I think….
Lew Weinstein said
I never had the sense that Corso became other than a live being, but that perspective does cast a different (dare I say?) shadow. I have enjoyed other books by Perez-Reverte, and I enjoyed this one too until I felt cheated at the end. LEW