Map
The Rule of Four
 | The Rule of Four Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason Date: 11 May, 2004 — $16.32 — Book Rating: |
The blurb on the back says
"A stunning first novel, a perfect blend of suspense and a sensitive coming-of-age story. If Scott Fitzgerald, Umberto Eco, and Dan Brown teamed up to write a novel, the result would be The Rule of Four." -Nelson DeMille
Snagged a copy (finally!) and read the book in a day. A lot of reviewers compare this (favorably!) with Dan Brown's DVC and I was curious. While weaving scholarship into suspense turns novels into hot property right now, I would have to give Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason props.
Props, for, number one, storytelling. No flashy writing here. The narration actually flows slowly, creating a tight relationship between the reader and the 4 characters. I felt like the 5th room mate, wanting to join in.
The setting made me wish for my own uni days and the atmosphere of learning that you actually live in. I also was left wishing that I could have made the most of my studies as I should have. Like Tom, I was an English Major. And while I consider myself reasonably well-read, I would have loved to have gotten immersed into the classics as much as either Tom or Paul and applied myself as diligently to the task of learning.
Because the narrative was slow and engaging, the art/lit history puzzle did not intimidate at all. It drew me in, and had me searching my own pitiful reserves of references --with no results of course-- the book has a good way of leading you into the story yet drawing you in to be part of it.
What set this apart, for me, from the Dan Brown books (sorry Dan Brown fans!) is that it is so much more than a story on unravelling a scholarly puzzle. It is also a story about friendship, of growing close and growing apart, of pains and secret sorrows and how these guide the choices that we make in life.
I specially love the way Chapter 18 played out and made me take a second look at cliches. Chapter 18 starts with the ultimate cliche, Love Conquers All and proceeds with an alternative explanation of the phrase with its background in classical lit.
"He's not supposed to be in your side. You fight with him; you try to undo what he does to others. But he's too powerful. No matter how much we suffer, Virgil says, our hardships cannot move him."
Okay, so call me simple, but that just blew me away. And I like this interpretation better. I've always wondered what that meant. Something about the popular explanation never really rang true with me, but I was never really interested enough to find out what it really meant, and what context and if there was an alternative meaning, or text.
If there was anything that this book gave me, it was a renewed interest in the classics and what I have not been reading or doing lately. Maybe a healthy dose of classical lit would do my current reading list some good.