What the Book! The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown

I bought this book because I wanted a page-turner, and I wasn’t disappointed. Although, there are a lot of pages to turn, six hundred and seventy-one to be exact; that’s one hundred and thirty-nine chapters of spare, economic prose. Each chapter is designed to advance the plot. And what a plot it is; intricate, convoluted perhaps, a bit unbelievable perhaps but Dan Brown doesn’t really give the reader the chance to let these impressions sink in, he keeps it moving and that’s what writing best sellers is all about, I guess.

The novel is set in modern times in the city of Prague. The city, with its history and architecture, quickly becomes one of the main characters which is a good thing because there are only two other Czech characters in the novel – two cops who border on Keystone in their ineptitude. The rest of the characters, good and bad, are mostly American. On the side of good, are Robert Langdon, a professor of symbology and Katherine Solomon a professor of noetic science. On the side of evil, tempered by the need to protect the US of A, is the CIA.

Robert and Katherine are in a romantic relationship. In fact, as the first chapter begins, they are waking up in Robert’s hotel room bed after a night of well….sex is alluded to but not described. It’s all very PG, almost prim, this is Dan Brown not John Updike. Although at one point in the book there’s a discussion about the science of the orgasm. You’re a wild one, Dan.

But talking of science, writing about science is one of Dan Brown’s strengths and how he incorporates it into the plot, when discussing human consciousness, is what makes this novel worth reading. The underlying theme in the book is that regular physics cannot explain how the human brain functions, that the human brain could not possibly store all the data we accumulate through our life spans. Instead, all these memories, emotions, knowledge, stories are stored in a universal consciousness and when we die all those memories etc. live on in that universal consciousness not unlike the way some religions describe the soul leaving the body at the moment of death. Dan Brown explains this and a number of other concepts far better than I have and weaves them effortlessly into the plot.

So buy the book, turn those pages, you’ll learn something and you’ll end up wanting to take a trip to Prague!