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Title: Simply Blah
Review: This is not among the worst of the many novels featuring Edgar Allan Poe as a character, but that hardly makes it good. Unlike many novelists who write about Poe, Moore obviously made some effort to research his life. Unfortunately, many of the sources she used are now considered outdated or otherwise discredited, ultimately giving her story the same lack of believability found in most Poe novels. Most of this book is, let's say, "accurate but fake."Unfortunately, "Fever" works even less well as a novel than it does as biography. Moore's attempts to make Poe sympathetic have him come off instead as simply pathetic. The writing and characterizations are universally dull. And I'm really, really tired of novelists endlessly depicting Virginia Poe as the eternally infantile, bland "child-wife"--an outmoded depiction no reputable Poe scholar endorses anymore.Someday, someone will write a historically accurate, well-written biographical novel about Poe. That hasn't happened yet, though.
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