The Da Vinci Code:
Every once in a while, a
book comes around which launches some new sect or cult or re-invigorates some old
theme or subject; the Da Vinci
Code fits this pigeon hole exactly. Its subject matter is the legendary Holy Grail, Mary Magdalene and ‘The Sacred Feminine’, a legendary bloodline flowing from the union of Jesus and the Magdalene, which survives today in France, and the source of its theme is the seminal,
alternative historical
work The Holy
blood and The Holy Grail published in 1982 by Lincoln, Baigent and Leigh. However, unlike the aforesaid, The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction woven around such themes.
The novel starts with the brutal killing of an aged curator called Sauniere in the world famous Louvre museum (Sauniere being the name of the historical Priest at the heart of the book The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail). At the scene of the crime is an intricate number of perplexing codes, which seem to represent some arcane or esoteric message. From this opening salvo, the book proceeds like all thrillers should - taut and tingling with suspense, surprise, swiftly moving like a breakneck brigand, as the cryptic curve meanders ever wider.
The two central characters in the book - a talented French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and a Harvard Professor called Robert Langdon with an expertise in ancient symbolism - begin an investigation of Herculean proportions much like a modern odyssey or some Grail quest or search. The task they take on soon becomes a monumental journey with twists and turns at every corner, immeasurable challenges, daunting puzzles, profound probes into ancient mysteries with strange meanings and rituals, lost knowledge and secrets buried in time, which will never be resurrected phoenix-like, if the two heroes cannot decipher them before the sands of time run out.
The book is appealing because essentially it has a bit for different readers - it’s a fusion of thriller and novel, it holds something for the treasure seeker, it reverberates with mystery, enlivened with the theme and subject matter of a ‘Real mystery in the South of France,’ titbits of ancient rituals and symbolism and just something different and outright strange for the alternative and the unorthodox.
Where it descends a little on the scale of measurement is, the writing is average enough - one could never say Dan Brown is a great writer and it could never be deemed a classic. In addition, it annexes the hypothesis of a secret contained in the paintings of Poussin, which the writers of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail posit and replaces it with the idea of a secret encoded in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci - in particular ‘The Last Supper’.
Nonetheless, as it has done much to re-ignite this theme in the midst of a work of fiction and has served ‘to throw light once again on this tradition’; revamping some of the ‘alternative’ truths believed by many adherents of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, Brown deserves much credit. Notwithstanding these hidden messages or secrets, on an entertainment level alone, it is a great read; and purely as a thriller, it is a barnstorming story.
More reviews about the The Da Vinci Code