Review: The DaVinci Code
Feb. 29th, 2004 07:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaI have been avoiding this book for quite some time, mostly because I knew I was going to be disappointed. A book about sacred geometry, symbolism, and mathematics? Telling the story of the Priory du Sion and the Knight Templars? As a best-selling page-turner thriller? This was going to have to suck like a Vax. It didn't help that the people who kept telling me to read it were my students - and that one of them kept saying "You'll love it; it's anti-Christian." (That student is Catholic, by the way.) However, it became clear that it was either read that and be able to discuss it with them intelligently, or go see Passion of the Christ and deconstruct it for them. I don't have the stomach for that, either gore-wise or theologically, so The DaVinci Code it was. (The month before it came out in paperback, yet; at least it was 30% off at Perimeters.)
I was pleasantly surprised. I am, however, curious as to why it's a bestseller; my theory on that at the end of the review.
Part I: Review of the Book as Literature
I'm generally not a fan of the "page-turner thriller" genre. Fortunately, the author's style is more like Grisham's or Creighton's than the average spy-novelist's. The chapters are too short, and the storytelling is choppy; Brown likes to leave us at a mini-cliffhanger every few pages. Partially because of this, the only character in the entire novel who feels fully-fleshed out at the end is the victim of the crime that opens the novel. The main character is one we've met a dozen times before, the academic whose research requires that he run off adventuring every so often. This one is at least not a swashbuckler; he's dragged into this adventure (almost literally). Most of the secondary characters feel flat, even predictable. The author also seems to like dropping references and then not explaining them for a chapter or two. The dialogue is as choppy as the plotting, although it at least never becomes wooden.
Having said that, it's a fast read. Very fast. It's a 450-page book in hardback; I started it on the bus to A&M Consolidated High School at 6:30 am and finished it at 11:30, with non-trivial interruptions (like getting my kids off to the Number Sense and Calculator tests on time and properly equipped). Granted, I'm a swifter reader than most, and I knew most of the background already, but even someone who is barely familiar with the art and completely unfamiliar with the Priory theory should have no trouble finishing this in three or four days. Even though it's as chopped-up as it is, the story flows decently, and the author's vocabulary is complex enough to be interesting without getting in the way. (Although, I did have to explain a few words to my student who was also reading it on the trip.)
It's no literary masterwork. It does do the job of telling the plot, though, and the plot is sufficiently interesting to make up for the deficiencies in pacing and character.
The basic plot of the book is simple enough: the four seneschals of the Priory of Sion have all been murdered, and the hero - an art historian with an interest in religious symbolism - is suspected of one of the murders. The last one to die leaves behind a cryptic message for his estranged granddaughter, involving codes, cryptography, symbolism, and the paintings of DaVinci, which the granddaughter and our hero must unravel before the French Special Police arrest them both, while also dodging the murderer, the ultraconservative Catholic sect to which he belongs, and the mysterious man commanding him. The ultimate prize is the location of the Sangreal itself, and who finds it first determines whether it is destroyed forever, revealed finally to the world, or kept safely in hiding for yet another time.
The information on the Priory du Sion and Opus Dei is all as accurate as could possibly be expected; small liberties are taken to serve the plot, but the basic information is all there. The granddaughter is estranged from her grandfather because she once accidentally witnessed a Heiros Gamos/Great Rite involving him, and wrote him out of her life immediately; this is also handled with tact, and even made into a scene of its proper reverence by the art historian. The exposition in the book covers not only Holy Blood, Holy Grail and its more academic relatives, but also a non-trivial portion of The Chalice and the Blade, and there are nods towards even grander conspiracy theories (see also the cameo by someone who is clearly one of the Gnomes of Zurich). While Wicca only gets a name-check, a more generic goddess-oriented Paganism is mentioned several times in the book, always in a favorable light. The book's presentation of the female Divine is Rennaisance-Romantic rather than feminist, but obviously open to female expressions of power; the granddaughter, who is likely to become a member of the Priory by the end of the book, is consistently depicted as smarter and more physically competent than the hero, and while she is definitely a romantic interest, she never becomes a damsel in distress. (She is the only major female character, but given the patriarchal nature of most of the institutions they run through or into - the Catholic Church, art curatorship, banking, Grail research, the French police - that's probably realistic. The other two female characters who take up any screen time are also both presented as strong and competent.)
One thing which does concern me is the presentation of disabilities in the book. There are two prominent people with obvious disabilities - the murderer, who is an albino and a former convict, and a Grail historian with post-polio syndrome, who walks on crutches. The albino is presented as deeply sinister when we first meet him, and is indeed a danger to society; he semi-redeems himself near the end of the book, but he has still killed at least five innocent people, threatened even more, and caused or ben the cause of thousands of dollars worth of property damage. It's not the usual presentation of an albino - sick, frail, weakly. It more closely resembles the "ghost twins" from the second Matrix movie. However, it's an unflattering depiction, except for a few noble traits, which till end up the character's downfall. The post-polio character is clearly very competent, and in fact wins a physical fight because his opponent misjudges him, but his physical disability is played for laughs a couple of times over the course of the book - and his motives are revealed to be rather suspect near the end. (This was a great disappointment to me, partially because I expected him to end up playing the part of the leg-wounded Grail King. Darn.) While I am glad to see a pair of disabled people as prominent characters, rather than completely absent from the book, I would have preferred for at least one of them to have been consistently on the "right" side, and for both characters to be more fleshed-out instead of using elements of caricature.
Overall, this is a nice gateway drug into conspiracy theory and alternative religions. Which brings me around to the question: how did this end up on the bestseller list? One reason, obviously, is stealth - the literary style is a Grisham thriller, the fast-reading shock-a-minute stuff the portion of the public who reads is used to. Moreover, the blow is softened a bit; the book contains an awful lot of heresy, but very little sex to make up for it (the Heiros Gamos sequence is the only sex scene in the book, and it's told in flashback - the inevitable movie need not show any sex at all). I think, however, that in large part this is an emblem of our divided culture. About half of us are ready for this - either we've heard this before, or we know a little about it, or they're suspicious enough of the Christian hierarchy to believe - if not that Christ was wholly human, at least that such a belief is reasonable and historical. The other half, the fundies and their allies, are doing their usual carpet-ripping foaming-at-the-mouth routine. I can only imagine what they'll do when the movie comes out, and this is delivered to the non-reading public.
Overall: B - not great literature, but fast, fun, and either mildly thought-provoking or a nice nod to one's already-held worldview.
I was pleasantly surprised. I am, however, curious as to why it's a bestseller; my theory on that at the end of the review.
Part I: Review of the Book as Literature
I'm generally not a fan of the "page-turner thriller" genre. Fortunately, the author's style is more like Grisham's or Creighton's than the average spy-novelist's. The chapters are too short, and the storytelling is choppy; Brown likes to leave us at a mini-cliffhanger every few pages. Partially because of this, the only character in the entire novel who feels fully-fleshed out at the end is the victim of the crime that opens the novel. The main character is one we've met a dozen times before, the academic whose research requires that he run off adventuring every so often. This one is at least not a swashbuckler; he's dragged into this adventure (almost literally). Most of the secondary characters feel flat, even predictable. The author also seems to like dropping references and then not explaining them for a chapter or two. The dialogue is as choppy as the plotting, although it at least never becomes wooden.
Having said that, it's a fast read. Very fast. It's a 450-page book in hardback; I started it on the bus to A&M Consolidated High School at 6:30 am and finished it at 11:30, with non-trivial interruptions (like getting my kids off to the Number Sense and Calculator tests on time and properly equipped). Granted, I'm a swifter reader than most, and I knew most of the background already, but even someone who is barely familiar with the art and completely unfamiliar with the Priory theory should have no trouble finishing this in three or four days. Even though it's as chopped-up as it is, the story flows decently, and the author's vocabulary is complex enough to be interesting without getting in the way. (Although, I did have to explain a few words to my student who was also reading it on the trip.)
It's no literary masterwork. It does do the job of telling the plot, though, and the plot is sufficiently interesting to make up for the deficiencies in pacing and character.
The basic plot of the book is simple enough: the four seneschals of the Priory of Sion have all been murdered, and the hero - an art historian with an interest in religious symbolism - is suspected of one of the murders. The last one to die leaves behind a cryptic message for his estranged granddaughter, involving codes, cryptography, symbolism, and the paintings of DaVinci, which the granddaughter and our hero must unravel before the French Special Police arrest them both, while also dodging the murderer, the ultraconservative Catholic sect to which he belongs, and the mysterious man commanding him. The ultimate prize is the location of the Sangreal itself, and who finds it first determines whether it is destroyed forever, revealed finally to the world, or kept safely in hiding for yet another time.
The information on the Priory du Sion and Opus Dei is all as accurate as could possibly be expected; small liberties are taken to serve the plot, but the basic information is all there. The granddaughter is estranged from her grandfather because she once accidentally witnessed a Heiros Gamos/Great Rite involving him, and wrote him out of her life immediately; this is also handled with tact, and even made into a scene of its proper reverence by the art historian. The exposition in the book covers not only Holy Blood, Holy Grail and its more academic relatives, but also a non-trivial portion of The Chalice and the Blade, and there are nods towards even grander conspiracy theories (see also the cameo by someone who is clearly one of the Gnomes of Zurich). While Wicca only gets a name-check, a more generic goddess-oriented Paganism is mentioned several times in the book, always in a favorable light. The book's presentation of the female Divine is Rennaisance-Romantic rather than feminist, but obviously open to female expressions of power; the granddaughter, who is likely to become a member of the Priory by the end of the book, is consistently depicted as smarter and more physically competent than the hero, and while she is definitely a romantic interest, she never becomes a damsel in distress. (She is the only major female character, but given the patriarchal nature of most of the institutions they run through or into - the Catholic Church, art curatorship, banking, Grail research, the French police - that's probably realistic. The other two female characters who take up any screen time are also both presented as strong and competent.)
One thing which does concern me is the presentation of disabilities in the book. There are two prominent people with obvious disabilities - the murderer, who is an albino and a former convict, and a Grail historian with post-polio syndrome, who walks on crutches. The albino is presented as deeply sinister when we first meet him, and is indeed a danger to society; he semi-redeems himself near the end of the book, but he has still killed at least five innocent people, threatened even more, and caused or ben the cause of thousands of dollars worth of property damage. It's not the usual presentation of an albino - sick, frail, weakly. It more closely resembles the "ghost twins" from the second Matrix movie. However, it's an unflattering depiction, except for a few noble traits, which till end up the character's downfall. The post-polio character is clearly very competent, and in fact wins a physical fight because his opponent misjudges him, but his physical disability is played for laughs a couple of times over the course of the book - and his motives are revealed to be rather suspect near the end. (This was a great disappointment to me, partially because I expected him to end up playing the part of the leg-wounded Grail King. Darn.) While I am glad to see a pair of disabled people as prominent characters, rather than completely absent from the book, I would have preferred for at least one of them to have been consistently on the "right" side, and for both characters to be more fleshed-out instead of using elements of caricature.
Overall, this is a nice gateway drug into conspiracy theory and alternative religions. Which brings me around to the question: how did this end up on the bestseller list? One reason, obviously, is stealth - the literary style is a Grisham thriller, the fast-reading shock-a-minute stuff the portion of the public who reads is used to. Moreover, the blow is softened a bit; the book contains an awful lot of heresy, but very little sex to make up for it (the Heiros Gamos sequence is the only sex scene in the book, and it's told in flashback - the inevitable movie need not show any sex at all). I think, however, that in large part this is an emblem of our divided culture. About half of us are ready for this - either we've heard this before, or we know a little about it, or they're suspicious enough of the Christian hierarchy to believe - if not that Christ was wholly human, at least that such a belief is reasonable and historical. The other half, the fundies and their allies, are doing their usual carpet-ripping foaming-at-the-mouth routine. I can only imagine what they'll do when the movie comes out, and this is delivered to the non-reading public.
Overall: B - not great literature, but fast, fun, and either mildly thought-provoking or a nice nod to one's already-held worldview.
