The Da Vinci Code

Rating:
Summary: Sift through the controversy for the truth
Review: This is a superb supsense thriller, well told. The raving angst some readers are registering here is a typical response to books that are critical of certain religious institutions. Da Vinci Code reminds me very much of another outstanding religious suspense thriller that generated a lot of heat a few years ago, Glenn Kleier's "The Last Day." Many readers were even more upset about the controversial theme of that novel (which was equally well researched and spellbinding). To read some of the reviews for Da Vinci Code or Last Day, you would think these books threaten the very foundation of Christianity -- and perhaps they do!

Rating:
Summary: Overrated Beach Reading
Review: This is good hack work, but for insights into early Christianity I much prefer THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JESUS CHRIST by Neil Elliott. This book begins with standard characters, then devolves into a so-called mystery the answer to which presumably will rock the foundations of the Catholic church. But it's just laughable that the New York Times gave this high praise, and shows how far their reviewers have fallen, and how little they understand Catholicism. Most Americans are not Catholic, and even those who are are not preoccupied with it. Da Big Mystery Exposed would draw a ho-hum from most of them.
This is beach reading that will impress New York intellectuals as deep and weighty, since they understand Christianity, the Vatican, and Catholicism not at all. But when the spook jumps out of the closet and yells "boo", most Catholic readers will just shrug and say "So what?"

Rating:
Summary: Unsatisifying Ending, Insulting, Unbelivable Characters
Review: On the plus side, the book started out interesting. In an Indiana Jones style, I was pulled into the interesting puzzles the characters had to solve under great time constraints. Then, the book transformed into a platform for the author to rage an attack against Christianity which seemed unfounded and insulting to my personal beliefs. Finally, I got the impression that the author had to 'finish' up. The ending was confusing and unsatisfying. Characters actions were no longer believable. Finally, the evidence regarding the lie of christianity that was to be reveled at the 'end' of the quest was never shown. This left me feeling cheated. I can't believe people actually thought this book was good. I feel ripped off that I bought it and actually spent time reading this trash.

Rating:
Summary: The Epitomy of a Page-Turner
Review: This book was one of the few great books that I have read lately. It was the perfect combination of mystery, thriller, and historical fiction. The fact that the book is written in real time adds to the excitement. The different points of view that you experience gives you just the right amount of information...explaining things and yet withoulding enough to keep you guessing. I couldn't put this down and with my busy life the fact that I read this in 2 days really says a lot.

Rating:
Summary: A brief précis in reply to " Real Junk"
Review: Actually I haven't read the book yet ( but you can count on it now!). I am here to give a short rebuttal to the person signed as " a reader" from Brookline, MA ( see Real Junk, October 18). This reviewer says: "...there is no such profession as 'symbologist'..." - But YES there IS dear reader! And -surprise,surprise- one of the most famous of those, certainly the most visible in the public's awareness, is none other than Professor Umberto Eco. who is a specialist is SEMIOTICS, which deals with the language (and of course, the meaning) of "symbols" of all kinds. What Brown has done,was simply to call it (this profession, that is) another name. My point is that such profession DOES exist and is enjoying excellent health. I thought you'd like to know.

Rating:
Summary: From another reviewer...worth reading
Review: Da Vinci' code for Catholic bashing

Our Sunday Visitor // Amy Welborn
08 June 2003

Who says that Catholicism doesn't influence American culture? The number one best-selling fiction title in the nation, "The Da Vinci Code" (Doubleday, $25) has "Catholic" on practically every page. Granted, the word is usually awfully close to words like "repressive," "patriarchal," and "brutal," but you have to take what you can get.

Or do you?

Since its release in March, the book has surprised many by becoming a best seller. The word on the street is that it's an "intelligent thriller," challenging the reader's mind with a suspenseful plot, but also with lots of culture and learning.

But "The Da Vinci Code" is neither learned nor challenging - except to the reader's patience. Moreover, it's not really suspenseful, and the writing is shockingly banal, even for genre fiction. It's a pretentious, bigoted, tendentious mess, and the uniformly positive press - including a rave in The New York Times and a fawning National Public Radio interview with author Dan Brown - should give us serious pause.

But if you think you might like a book whose ultimate effect is something like Umberto Eco proudly presented by Fox Network, here's the plot, such as it is:

(Be warned, there are "spoilers" ahead. A book this bad deserves to be spoiled, but if you don't want to know what happens, stop reading now.)

A curator at the Louvre is murdered in a gallery, but before he dies, he manages to leave clues and arrange his body in a significant way. His cryptologist granddaughter, Sophie Neveu, and a visiting American academic, Robert Langdon, whose specialty is religious symbolism, are drawn into the case and discern that Grandpere Sauniere was trying to leave a message - not about his killer, but about a Big Secret.

Catholic conspiracy

Sauniere was part of an ancient secret society called the Priory of Sion, for centuries charged with protecting the Big Secret. The Big Secret threatens to disrupt Life As We Know It. Naturally, the Catholic Church has spent the last thousand years making sure that it doesn't get out.

So, what's the Big Secret? Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, who was pregnant when He was crucified. Their child's descendents are still alive, anonymous and protected by the Priory.

The Priory is also the guardian of the real true faith Jesus and Mary Magdalene wanted passed on: the celebration of the "sacred feminine ."

The Da Vinci Code, then, is the story of the big race to reach the Holy Grail - which turns out to be not the chalice of the Last Supper but the remains of Mary Magdalene, mostly.

Sophie and Langdon race against the Church, primarily represented by an albino Opus Dei adherent taking directions from a bishop and mysterious "Teacher."

They race from clue to clue left by Sophie's code-loving Grandfather, puzzles left everywhere from the Bank of Zurich to the Church of Saint-Sulpice to Westminster Abbey to the paintings of Leonardo DaVinci.

Da Vinci, the story goes, portrayed his devotion to the Holy Grail of the sacred feminine into his Last Supper. The figure at Jesus' right is not a male, but Mary Magdalene, who is his partner in the gospel of the sacred feminine.

Same old lies

Hardly any of this background is original. Most of it is derived directly from the fantasy-disguised-as-history work "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," and the rest of it is cobbled from other bits of well-worn and risible nuggets of esoteric and Gnostic conspiracy theories.

Brown's treatment of the Roman Catholic Church is unoriginal as well. He uncritically repeats, among many other lies and distortions, the canard that the Church was responsible for killing five million accused witches during the medieval period.

And, I bet you didn't know the divinity of Jesus Christ thing was invented by the Emperor Constantine as a way of shoring up his power:

"'My dear....until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet....a great and powerful man, but a man nevertheless. A mortal.'

"'Not the Son of God?'

"'Right.' Teabing said. 'Jesus' establishment as 'the Son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea.'

'Hold on. You're saying Jesus' divinity was the result of a vote?'"

Whoa, dude!

You get the picture. This is not exactly the learned, intellectually engaging work it's cracked up to be.

Neither is it a well-crafted suspense novel. There is precious little action. Characters stand in a restroom in the Louvre for two chapters, explaining things to each other. Then they move to the Bank of Zurich, where they explain some more. And so on. These one-dimensional characters talk their way to Scotland where they spend a few chapters explaining the unsatisfying climax of this most wretched book.

Books this bad are usually best ignored, but in addition to being a best seller, Amazon reader reviews show a startling number of people are deeply gratified the book has taught them some history they didn't know before.

So thanks to "The Da Vinci Code," Catholicism is blipping on the cultural radar, loud and clear, aided by aggressive marketing and generous reviewers of influence, defining Catholic Christianity for scores of gullible readers.

Talk about a conspiracy. ...

Welborn ([e-mail]) writes from Indiana.

Copyright 2003 Our Sunday Visitor

© 2003, Information Office of Opus Dei on the Internet
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Rating:
Summary: Very predictable
Review: Forget taking the On-line IQ tests. Read half the book, and if you can figure out the plot, congratulations, you have a 100 IQ. If you need to read to page 300, sorry.

Rating:
Summary: if you believe in the-church-as-conspiracy...
Review: i guess i'm an odd one in that the judeo-christian-islamic tradition never made much sense to me. as a teenager, i came to one conclusion: the church is a man-made conspiracy to keep women oppressed. this book kind of builds on that theory using history as a backdrop.

a lot of what dan brown writes about is tied to what historians know about early christianity, pre-christian, and non-western faiths. and that's what makes it all the more interesting. it's an excellent, thought-provoking read.

Rating:
Summary: Symbols and More
Review: Have you ever left a movie, limp, exhausted and just wrung out? Were you on the edge of your seat the whole time? The Da Vinci Code left me that way. Everytime I relaxed a little, "Okay, they made it through THAT crisis", up would come another.
Author Dan Brown takes his major characters, symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu through a harrowing search/journey that leaves you with more information than you probably want to know about art history, symbolism, ancient religions, cults, architecture and much more.
Although the flashbacks are too long, wordy and at times intrusive, the plot, the use of modern technology and the sheer speed of the action make this a book you will find hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: Real Junk
Review: This book is complete and utter nonsense. None of its "history" is correct. There is no profession of "symbologist," for example. And that's not all the nonsense. The plot is transparent and predictable at every turn.
All this could be fun, but it is written with pompous seriousness. In addition to inventing weird history (powerful secret societies, details of the search for the Holy Grail), the book misinforms about or hypes up essentially every real subject it touches.
My aching back! On the best seller list yet!