Ok, so I've taken the piss out of Dan Brown on this blog before, but I've got to admit that there's a good novel buried within The Lost Symbol. The story is fast paced, unusual and exciting. There are two excellent plot twists that I didn't see coming and the book's characters could possibly exist in the real world (allbeit a real world where an assembly full of high school students cheer wildly when they discover that their guest speaker is the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution). I listened to the audiobook version of The Lost Symbol and the narration was crisp and fluid and the characters were well differentiated. For at least three quarters of the book I was gripped by the premise and Brown's clever nesting of the plot within objects and arcana. I admired Brown's dispassionate prose which is the way to go with sensational material and I dug his device of leaving each chapter on a hook. The book takes place in Washington DC and there's murky goings on with masons - two elements that I also really enjoyed....
However, (and you knew there was a however coming didn't you?) the problems I had with The Lost Symbol were many. First of all, I didn't like the fact that the book ended and then we still had two full hours to go. Two hours of exposition, back tracking and explanation that added nothing to the story whatsoever; and it annoyed the hell of me that the people doing this exposition had just seen their loved ones tortured and killed, but somehow, avoiding a mental breakdown, they decided to lecture us on their own personal exegesis of the Old Testament. End the book already! I kept yelling at the iPod.
...
Secondly I didn't like Brown playing fast and loose with science: no Mr Brown ESP doesn't work, positive thoughts cannot reverse the growth of cancer cells, there is no such thing as a Jungian collective unconscious etc. etc. Those studies you mentioned about people praying for heart patients? - the results were the opposite of what you put in the book.
...
My third problem was Brown's use of the word "chuckle". Everybody was always chuckling. Nobody laughed, tittered, hooted, snorted, guffawed, broke up, convulsed, snickered, whooped etc. They just chuckled. And boy did they chuckle. They chuckled in extremis. They chuckled when recalling memories. They especially chuckled when revealing odd bits of masonic lore. Dan Brown's got fifty million dollars and a library of ten thousand volumes but he doesn't own a Thesaurus?
...
Ok, but that's enough of the hating. It's probably just jealousy. Dan Brown has written a page turner that's quite a bit slicker than the Da Vinci Code with less obvious howlers and better twists; so if you're looking for a good audiobook for your commute, I'd happily recommend it. (He said with a chuckle).
26 comments:
Never been brave enough to read a Dan Brown book, but I have to say, that bit of chuckle information didn't help. I really hate that too. Top shelf novelist who doesn't own a thesarus? Or who doesn't proofread? Blind editor? I'd probably read it if I got it for a gift, but I don't think I'd ever buy it.
But, good review, sir.
Adrian,
Nice review. I enjoyed Da Vinci Code for what it was trying to be, a fun, if unbelievable, page-turner. Sure, the characters were a bit one-dimensional, but Brown wasn't worried about that. Maybe I'll check this one out too.
Granddad was a Mason, so I'll probably enjoy it for that reason as well.
Didn't respond to your Dan Brown parody, but it was a real hoot, laughed non-stop through it all and for many minutes after.
The lecture at the end of the Lost Symbol is, as you say, a dreadful bore, particularly since we've just discovered (Spoiler alert!) that the villain's plan all along was to have HIMSELF killed.
Great review, but I'm not reading it. I will, however read the one about the squirrel.
Liam
The chuckling was annoying but why the editor let the book go and on after the denoument was a real puzzle.
Brian
I thought this was better than Da Vinci.
I thought the Masonic stuff was quite interesting as I dont know a whole lot about the Masons (or do I? duh duh duhhhh).
Girish
The lecture at the end of the book is very peculiar. Nothing gets revealed and it merely recapitulates what we already know in some detail. If it had been a 70's style horror flick at least there would have been a hand coming up out of a lake or something in the middle of the explanation.
Seana
Well you could give it a listen if you were so inclined.
Masons are behind all evil deeds and conspiracies of the modern world. I hear from reliable sources they're even behind Thierry Henry's handball pass.
Marco
Very simple solution. In all world cup games each coach gets one video referee challenge per half. Wouldnt slow the game down and would prevent insanity like this.
This was nuts. He was offside and did two handballs and three players saw it. This was far worse than the incident with Maradonna.
No, not so inclined. My grandfather was a Mason, too by the way. I have pin of his somewhere. But his Masonic secrets died with him.
The Irish were robbed and I totally agree with having at least challenge per half. There was always a reason Henry rubbed me the wrong way and yesterday's disastrous cheating didn't help his case any. Both my Greens and Swedes will be watching the World Cup from home next summer and I hate having to find new teams to root for. Such is life I suppose.
Viva la Azzurri!
Thanks Liam. Hope your new team will make you proud next year.
Seana
Like Brian and you my maternal grandfather was also a Mason.
But I am not.
Or am I?
No, I'm not.
Or am I?
No.
Or...
Liam
Denmark.
Excellent review there, sir. I'm still puzzled, though. Why don't Dan Brown's editor(s) serve him better?
Adrian,
[Does the equivalent of a Masonic super-secret handshake through a blog comment]
Yeah, the Danes are close enough to the Swedes and I really like Bendtner as a player. I pulled for the Italians in 2006 and look what happened. Gonna be a fun time, next summer.
As for Henry, he shouldn't sell himself short on the French volleyball team. Heck of a serve.
Adrian, the video challenge has to have some risk attatched. In NFL they at least lose a time out if the challenge is not upheld.
Maybe they could lose a substitution if the challenge isn't upheld. That way, if they're out of substitutions, there couldn't be another challenge, the way NFL coaches can't challenge if they're out of timeouts. Adds a little strategy to the decision.
Now, as Declan Burke has asked on his blog, how do the Irish feel about Maradona's Hand of God now?
Mike
I've got to think that the chuckle thing is laziness on the part of his editor.
The whole ending though might have been what Dan wanted and insisted upon and as such was uneditable.
Brian
nuff said.
Liam
Well the French are world handball champions and apparently Henry is a big NBA fan.
John
I never liked Maradonna. He cheated and didnt come clean about it. And he's a coke snorting lunatic.
I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but with so much match fixing going on in football I sometimes wonder about decisions like that.
Yeah lose a sub is a good rule.
Actually, I'm not sure if it was the Masons, come to think of it. It may have been some other 'secret' order. I know my step-grandmother was a member of the women's auxiliary because we met some of her peers, secret or otherwise, in a restaurant once.
I kind of remember this stuff coming up in high school, when girls would be asked to join yet another auxiliary. I heard a bit about the super secret ceremonies somehow. Seemed pretty absurd. I think the ceremonies of exclusive, meaning excluding, societies probably almost always are.
Did anyone here read Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas? I don't know if I actually read it or if I just read about it somewhere. At any rate, I liked her critique of all the signs and symbols of having reached some more elevated state. Even though, by some accounts, she was a bit of a snob herself. Go figure.
Seana
By some accounts? Ms Woolf was no fan of the lower orders.
I actually wrote 'by all accounts' first and then realized that that might be immoderate. And besides someone would probably just google an old letter from a childhood servant talking of her devotion to the little people.
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