The problem is that it’s difficult not to keep falling out
of the plot when you’re constantly being distracted by elements lacking
credibility, by confusion of tenses, misuse of subjunctives, and people saying the
same thing twice without reasonable cause. Maybe the last of those is a
creative writing device. Mr Brown is, after all, a professor of creative
writing, so maybe he knows something I never thought of: that characters need
to say the same thing twice so that we dullards who make up the readership will
wake up and take notice the second time around.
One thing he does get unequivocally right, though, is the
process of persuading us to have no qualms about liking and trusting the female
protagonist, Sophie Neveu (notwithstanding the unfortunate tendency of her name
to constantly provoke a troublesome allusion to Beaujolais Nouveau.) After all,
how could anybody fail to like and trust a woman with unstyled burgundy hair
which frames the warmth of her face? I couldn’t, certainly.
But over and above that is the fact that she is so far proving
to be more clear headed, resourceful, rational and intuitive than the male
protagonist, Robert Langdon. Interestingly, this appears to have something to
do with the fact that she is a French female who speaks English with a French
accent, whereas he is a mere American male who probably speaks English like a true
Bostonian. There are several hints so far that Mr Brown is something of a Francophile,
a tendency to which sensibility it would be unreasonable of me to disapprove.
Maybe he watched A Vous la France,
too. And got the book and did the exercises…
And so, in true Brownian style, I will repeat myself: so far
the plot is sustaining me. I’ll keep you posted if I find anything notable to
say on the matter.
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