Da Book

Warning, I think I’m coming down with strep, so this post might be a bit… feverish.

So I am now amongst the ranks of the vast, vast, vast majority of people on the planet who have read The Da Vinci Code. I think it was HelenKay Dimon who said a few months ago that she was surprised it was still on the bestseller lists, because she didn’t think there were that many people out there who didn’t already have a copy and needed to buy one. Personally, I think that you’d be surrpised how long it takes to sell a book to a couple of hundred million people.

Anyway, I read it. My dad said that he was shocked — shocked — to discover that there was actually a novel out there that he’d red and I hadn’t. When he read it, about a year ago, it spurned a massive trip to B&N, during which we perused many shelves of Da Vinci Code-inspired books. You know what I’m talking about. Art history tomes espousing the theories Dan Brown laid out, copies of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, stuff like that. (By the bye, I think I know why those folks are suing — that is, if it isn’t all some massive publicity stunt to bring this 1982 book’s Amazon ranking to, at last check, #60). On page 254 of Code, the main character says of that book and its authors:

“To my taste, the authors made some quite dubious leaps of faith in their analysis…”

They should drop the plagairism charge and head straight for slander. JUST KIDDING! But, seriously y’all, it’s called research for a reason! Sheesh. This lawsuit is too ridiculous for words!)

So, I read the book, and now I want to talk about it. Which means all of you people (all three of you) who haven’t and don’t want to be spoiled for the movie in May (because I doubt you’ll be reading the book if you’ve waited this long), need to get along right about now. Commence with the spoilage.

I’m serious.

Really.

Enogeb, uoy sredaer-non!

Ha, ha. See? I can write in code, too.

No, seriously. Leave now. If you need occupation, both my book and Dan Brown’s (ah, see how I did that?) can be bought on Amazon. They both have secret societies in them. And lots of rose imagery (which I swear I didn’t know about in advance, having just read the book myself).

Spoilers are a comin’.

I liked the book. I thought it was incredibly fast-paced, and kept me interested, and I really didn’t see all the twists and turns coming (though I guessed the final cipher a LONG LONG LONG time before anyone in the book did, I honestly hadn’t guessed the identity of The Teacher. Disappointing, really, though remember, I’m the girl who was surprised when Mr. Darcy proposed, so I’m not exactly one to whom the mystery genre is aimed). I was fascinated by the central premise, as well as all the intesting speculation on myth, history, and art. Wonderful mix of fact and fiction, history and thriller. Of course, reading the book, one could begin to believe that EVERYTHING in European history happened for the express purpose of either serving or fighting the cover up. Still, as a writer who often subjugates historical facts to the yoke of storytelling, I have to say, this book was my style.

BUT…

Dude, what happened to the characterization? Sophie was feisty to spare, but honestly, she must be the WORST cryptologist in France. Not only did I figure out most of the codes befores she did, but sometimes the jetlagged American “symbologist” (didn’t know Harvard had a “symbology” department. I wonder, what department were his supposedly undergrad classes in?) beat her as well. Also, some of those codes were SAD. Like how long it took them to figure out the backwards script. I mean, please.

In addition, for a Parisian, she was quite the prude. Most Frenchwomen I know would have shrugged off grandpa’s little sex foibles, had themselves a latte, and bought a new scarf.

Also, and I’ve told my editor this, and no offense towards people afflicted with albinism, I think that every book needs more naked, bloody albinos. It’s the literary equivalent of more cowbell. I can’t think of a single novel that wouldn’t be improved by more naked, bloody albino. And boy was he naked and bloody A LOT. The first time, fine. The second time, I became a bit more skeptical. But when, at last (I think this is the fifth or sixth time he got naked and bloody in the book) he was naked and bloody and dragging a bishop (not naked, but bloody) across the STREETS OF LONDON while naked and bloody, that I realized what a coup this motif had turned out to be. From now on, no book of mine is complete without naked and bloody albinos.

And that’s a fact.

The book inspired me to go take another look at all of these paintings, and is it me, or did I spend my childhood looking at an entirely different The Last Supper? I could have sworn that the one Google showed me is totally different than the one that is hanging over my grandmother’s kitchen table all my life. Then again, Google might be slightly skewed towards a version that is more Da Vinci friendly. And I probably spent a lot of time looking at a cheap knockoff rather than a more faithful reproduction.

Finally, I don’t know why people are so “threatened” by the idea that Jesus being married is a challenge to His divinity. That it would create a power struggle, sure, that I buy, and that’s the argument I think should have been at the forefront of the book, but it’s not as if the ancient Romans would have been surprised by the idea of a god bearing mortal children. Happened all the time back then. Zeus, anyone? Besides, Jesus was mortal, and he was God’s son. No, what was really the problem was that if Constantine had allowed it to get spread around that Jesus had kids, then people would start wondering why it was that Constantine was king rather than Jesus’s descendents. That should have been the issue Langdon and Teabing were pushing on Sophie, not the divinity one. IMO. Although Dan Brown says on his website that some modern Christians write him hate mail about this theory, so they are clearly threatened by it as well. I’m not a Christian, but I think I would like the idea, personally.

I think if I’d read this book at a more impressionable age, I would have been completely bowled over by it, but as it stands, I got most of my formative literatary view of the Sacred Feminine from The Mists of Avalon, which took a more strictly pagan view of how thoroughly the Christian church stamped out the goddess. By which I mean to illustrate that these are novels, folks, exhaustively researched and perhaps historically accurate novels, but novels just the same. Fiction. Not true. Containing a few facts, sure, but still just a story someone made up to entertain us and make us think and make us discuss things. And if this weren’t the most popular novel on the Earth and several outlying satellites, perhaps I wouldn’t feel compelled to blog about what parts worked for me and what parts didn’t, but it is, so I am. Overall, though, I liked it very much, and I will go see the movie, which might have the most perfect casting one could imagine.

So, go Da Vinci Code. Two thumbs up.