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If you've been living under a rock or something, you may not have noticed the phenomenon that is "The Da Vinci Code", a book written by American author Dan Brown. To say it has received mixed opinion is a bit of an understatement. [NB. Links may contain spoilers]
So I thought I'd better read it and form my own opinion.
I picked it up a few months ago in a bookshop at Stanstead Airport, during one of those "buy two for the price of three" (or something) offers. It stayed at the top of my "to read" pile for quite some time -- not because I've stopped reading, more that I kept choosing the book underneath it.
Still, the time eventually came. Curiousity got the better of me. I picked it up, and started to read.
Goodness by heck, I wish I hadn't.
The writing is terrible, laughably bad. Hackneyed, cliched, trite. Paper-thin characterisation (and even then, that paper would need to be really, really thin), unbelievable situations, underpinned by a formulaic method of writing that practically hands you annotated notes stapled to a signpost over what will happen within the next couple of chapters:His heart pounded as he took in the bizarre sight now glowing before him on the parquet floor. Scrawled in luminescent handwriting, the curator's final words glowed purple beside his corpse. As Langdon stared at the shimmering text, he felt the fog that had surrounded this entire night growing thicker.
Langdon read the message again and looked up at Fache. "What the hell does that mean!" Fache's eyes shone white. "That, monsieur, is precisely the question you are here to answer."
The writing doesn't get any better than that. Really. Yes, I know it's well suited to the genre, but even so.
And yet... what the book lacks in terms of the above (in just about every single department other than accurate spelling) it more than makes up for in pace.
This single aspect will practically guarantee you finish the book, regardless of the slightly queasy feeling welling up in your brain as you read. It's a pageturner. The literary equivalent of a supersize fast food meal. You know it's not good for you, but you'll lick up every crumb anyway.
So all in all: Entertaining, but poorly-written, populist claptrap. And I've not even mentioned Foucault's Pendulum. Arse.
Loved it - literary equiv. of watching lesbian porn in your boxers with curtains drawn at 3pm with a large reefer in one hand and a pot noodle in the other. In terms of writing I've seen string vests with more holes but yeah....loved it. It kind of married the feeling of Pi with art but not in a cheap Five tv exposé kind of way.