Oh, really?

Rosa rugosa, one of the oldest species of rose, had five petals and pentagonal symmetry, just like the guiding star of Venus, giving the Rose strong iconographic ties to womanhood.

The DaVinci Code was this weekend's reading. I don't pick up many books from the best-seller lists, but this happened to be this month's selection for our neighborhood book club. Quick read, not much there there. The protagonist is a two-dimensional haircut-of-a-man (...wonder which Hollywood type will get to bring him to life [so to speak] on the big screen). Absent character development, clever wordplay and rapid-fire plot twists keep the book moving, but at the end of it all I'm left with the feeling that I've sat through a very lengthy spiel by a charismatic flim flam man. (So Dark The Con Of Man, indeed.)

It looks like a number of articles and reviews have pointed out the considerable liberties taken with religious, cultural and art historical details in the book. Here's another. The quote above is intended to explain the Priory of Sion's adoption of the rose as a symbol for the Holy Grail. The Priory was founded in 1099. Rosa rugosa (native to the Far East) was not introduced to Europe until 1796, when it was brought to England.

It's just coincidence, not synchronicity, that I've spent a chunk of today, the 40th anniversary of JFK's assassination, reading a book in the tradition of conspiracy theory. I'm left as unsatisfied by it as I was by Oliver Stone's movie. Must re-read Foucault's Pendulum. (Conspiracy theory. Doin' it right.)

Comments

[Alicia]

I really enjoyed Foucault's Pendulum better than The DaVinci Code. I have read some Templar and Priory of Sion books by Baigent and Leigh, and Knight and Lomas. DaVinci Code almost seems like the "real research books" Knight and Lomas write, but Brown has a tendency to hide information from the reader to create a false suspense. It irritated me and pulled me out of the story. His historical errors relegate the book to fiction only, even with the well researched bits in there.