Holiday Reading

I probably shouldn't confess to this, but on the basis that I may save someone from wasting time, I have to confess that last week, in a spirit of curiosity, I tried to read The Da Vinci Code. I'd already heard that it was poorly written, and while I'm nowhere near well enough educated to aspire to being a literary snob I have trouble with stuff that's clumsily put together. I'd also heard that it was worth persevering because of the "interesting" revelations and all that bollocks, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I was uneasy from the start, because any novel which introduces the character of a masochistic red-eyed albino assassin monk in the first chapter is unlikely to turn out to be Great Literature. By the time I got to the discussion of the multitude of significant hidden references to female spirituality in the work of Walt Disney my main regret was that the copy I was reading belonged to someone else so I couldn't throw it in the pool.

So for what it's worth, my opinion is pretty much as follows: clumsy prose, laughable one-dimensional characters, superficial research, complete lack of any wit or humour, predictable "revelations". On the plus side, uhhh, no, there isn't a plus side. To sum up in the words of the late Bill Hicks, "Piece of shit. Walk away."

I walked away. I didn't finish it. I neither know nor care What Happens At The End, nor do I want anyone to tell me the identity of The Teacher. Someone commented on a radio book programme that Dan Brown has "succeeded in lowering the bar when it comes to writing a novel", and that means that Suzie Creamcheese will probably now be encouraged to finish her book and find a publisher, and quite honestly a world where that can happen isn't one I want to live in.