Magdalene.org Book Review
by Lesa Bellevie
The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown (Doubleday, 2003)
Warning: may contain some spoilers!
As a person who primarily reads old non-fiction, I have no idea at any given time what is on bestseller lists. Thus
my introduction to The Da Vinci Code came via unconventional means: visitors to my website. It happened that at least
once a week I would receive an email from a well-meaning visitor who asked something along the lines of, "have you read
The Da Vinci Code? What do you think of it?" Knowing that Da Vinci's "Last Supper" had a secret possibly related to
Mary Magdalene, I suspected that this new book was yet another in the growing list of tomes outlining why the revelation
that Jesus and Magdalene were married is fact rather than fiction.
It wasn't until browsing a new book store that I realized The Da Vinci Code was actually a fictional work. When my
husband mentioned that he wanted to read it because he kept hearing people rave about it, I decided I should pick up a
copy rather than request a review copy. Two days later, here I sit, a review bubbling to the surface.
Let me start by saying that The Da Vinci Code is a marvelous piece of FICTION. Billed as a mystery/thriller, it's a
fast-paced read that doesn't disappoint. It all starts when a curator of the Louvre is killed and a prominent American
symbologist from Harvard (hah!) is called in to give his thoughts on the crime scene. The granddaughter of the curator
happens to be a police cryptologist, and when she shows up on the scene, the whole situation kicks into high gear.
Without revealing TOO much (this is, after all, Magdalene.org, so you may suspect that the book has something to do with
Mary Magdalene), the book turns into a quest for the Holy Grail. For anyone familiar with the recently drawn connections
between Magdalene and the Grail, you can well imagine what kind of story this becomes. Don't let that stop you, however;
as familiar as I am with the modern legend, I still found the book to be good entertainment.
The mistake comes when you try to read the book as anything but fiction. Yes, the author has rooted the story in modern
research, but he has overstated the academic acceptance of the Grail legend, and has repeated some quite unscholarly
statements (such as that five million women were burned as witches in Europe, a figure that has been solidly debunked).
There is a sense of naivete in his simplification of Goddess symbolism and in the Grail legend; not a problem in a piece
of fiction, really, but his expert characters seemed a bit amateur to me.
Finally there is the Grail legend itself, which is far from being proved conclusively, regardless of how many people are
publishing books about it. I don't fault the author for this at all, it was only a matter of time before someone picked
up all the threads and wove a yarn that would hit the bestseller list.
Regardless of the sources and research involved, it makes one hell of a modern romp through some of my favorite legends
and myths, so I enjoyed it tremendously.
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