(well I wished my comeback book was something better than this.)
Name : Veronica décide de mourir
Writer : Paulo Coelho
Publishing year : 1998
Language : French
Type : Recommended, Novel
Recommended by : Insaf Bouqrou', Inas Laghdess
Estimated time : about 7 hours.
Main themes : Insanity, psychology, coming-of-age, liberation.
Recommended for : Hardcore Coelho fans only.
The book in a few words : First world problems meets the Alchemist.
The synopsis : A perfectly fine young lady decides that she's bored of life and tries to commit suicide, but she didn't die and she only has 5 days to rediscover life and what she's missing out on and feel regret for being a stupid perfectly fine young lady.
The Rating : Disappointing 4/10
The Review :
My oh my.
Paulo Coelho is such a thorny writer to approach. He's venerated by many "readers" and hated by other readers (notice the use of quotes). I like his comparison to Justin Beiber : Many people hate him without even listening to his music, many people hate him after listening to his music, but many, many people (impressionable 13 years old girls) think he's the best singer in the universe of all time. Because of this, when you "hate on him" you get waves of angry comments for being mean for no reason. "His music gets Grammys!" they say, and there is no tangible proof that he's overrated and he sucks and the attention he gets should be equally distributed on far more talented people who really deserve it. Defining "more talented" and "deserve" is another problem, but everyone on the other side of the fence know what it means. You just feel those people need someone who show them the light and direct them to the better ways of life.
Now this is a long paragraph for a writer of whom I've hardly read two books (one of them twice). I'm no expert in Coelho and I ain't got no time to spend on reading his books after being disappointed by this one. But other people with more time in their hands did, and they don't seem to differ from the aforementioned groups : Either hate it for being overexposed and overrated, or revere it and having all his book read and reread and shared as cute, inspiring quotes.
Before reading this book, I didn't want to put myself in any of the previous categories, I only read the Alchemist (which I liked moderately but I only gave it a 4/5 for being the first novel I've read) and I didn't want to go with the flow and pretend to be an illuminated reader who sees right through his repetitive malarkey and consider people who do like him to be shallow, inexperienced readers. (I might as well belong to those for all I know).
But now, I read Veronica, which is claimed by many to be his best work (alongside his "masterwork", the Alchemist) and a complete change of tone in contrast with many of his other books that kind of feel the same (uh oh).
So I held my hope high and opened it with all the good intentions, and I really wanted to give him a try, maybe he's greater than the sum of the inspirational quotes everybody seems to relate to.
First thing I notice: Dry style. Some may mistake that for being an "easy" or even a "smooth" read, but it is not. It's just .. dry. Oversimplified, dry writing style. It feels like you're reading an average article from a newspaper, and it's not a good thing.
There is the Minimalism that I adore (and I think helped the Alchemist to feel bare and genuine), but it's not even that. It's just a tasteless, colorless steam of words. What's more, it wasn't what the story required or needed, it was just a choice of the author. I believe that a good use of imagery and description would have helped the package in some way, but what can I say.. Coelho is a crowd-pleaser (yes, I meant that in a very negative way). In the same vein, metaphors and allegories, when feebly used, were spoon-fed to the reader. There is not figuring out or "Aha!" moments, only direct, in-your-face obvious symbolism that is explained many times throughout the book, in case the very sophisticated intellectual readers of Coelho didn't pick up on them if they weren't attentive enough the first ten times they were explained (and not dumb enough, God forbid).
Next was the heroine. And for a book to be named after and centered around one character, she was such a disappointment. I couldn't put my finger on why she just was irritating for me to try to connect to, but I guess I ultimately figured it out: she's rushed. It feels like the author didn't have an exact portrait of her before he started writing, he just kept using her as a plot device. So she was first this blatant ungrateful first-world woman who didn't have any problem except maybe being in a Coelho-created universe, she was bored and she decided to die. She decided to die because she was a pretty woman who could have all what a pretty woman can have from this life (work, love, marriage, eventual divorce (?), settling, children, all the "normal" pleasures of love), and that wasn't good enough for her.
But she's called a smart person throughout the novel, so she could have just planned a journey to change her life or live an adventure like a smart, self-conscious person would do (I will read you, Eat Pray Love), but she didn't. Veronica decided to die, decided that nothing in life is ever gonna be of interest for her although she never quit her little place and never tried to change her routine. She gave up, and that's a stupid cowardly thing to do (and she thought she was very courageous!). Now before anyone say that I don't get the mind of a suicidal or a depressive person, I can say she wasn't one. She's not a "messed up" person. She was very ordinary in every aspect of the word for the rest of the novel. She wanted to live right after meeting Zedka, which is, clue for the clueless, was becoming a friend of hers. Why didn't she try to get friends before? Beats me. She then clung to dear life like the most normal people do, and while that might have served the "message" of the book (rant below), it harmed the character integrity. And the "sexual awakening" was so .. impromptu. It popped out of nowhere, the setting was bad, the motive was nonexistent. It was pulled out of the bucket to push once again the message of the book, but it was so badly done. (For notes on how to do it correctly, see Flowers for Algernon Charlie's second "phase of growth". The whole book built up to that part, and it made perfect sense. Here we see a girl who experienced the limits of her sexual desire on her deathbed because an old woman told her about it in a meditation session .. COM'ON!). I have many inconsistencies to point out about her that I won't mention -almost every chapter draws her with different colors- which made any growth of the character seem more like a forced step down the archetype of Santiago, the protagonist of the Alchemist : a person who's lost at life, have a faithful encounter with a life changing figure (the doctor/the king), goes on a journey of self-discovery and more fateful meetings, and then achieve the Magnus Opus and become one with the universe and reaches its human peak and then find a materialistic treasure (the gold/the very pretty boy who understands you. And that's another point, she didn't find just any love, but one with a very hot dude who's an artist and is very understanding and deep. Too much for a spiritual message :v).
Secondary characters got all their half-witted full 5 pages!! I hoped they had more elaborate lives, and not all of them were pretty much .. normal poeple. Before you jump and say 'EXACTY! That's the poooiiiinnt of the book!!!!", I take back what I said. They're normal people in our definition of insanity, not the book's (that's trying so hard to rebrand insanity as "just like you, but different". Really insane poeple are nothing like the ones the book cherrypicked, but more like the many others that didn't pay attention to Veronica and stayed in the backgrounds doing backflips and eating their snot). They were all melodramatic, and every page screamed "please feel sorry for us! #CrazyPeopleAreJustLikeYou"). Zedka was almost given depth but then she was tossed away like my hope of this book being any good. The rest was truly and utterly meh, with Eduard's story being "please let me fly with my own wings" typical and Maria's mixture of many half-baked ideas (I don't know why he bothered to make up such a weak background story for her: for example he didn't make any use of her being an attorney at all except for trying to sound clever in one useless line by the end of the book, ha).
"Vitriol Or The Bitterness" was the worst combination of concept/nomenclature I encountered in literature so far. The notion of it is hilarious (I don't think laughter was the intended effect, but I hope sounding sophisticated wasn't too). To name an "ethereal substance that slowly pushes people to die of bitterness and boredom" after an instant-effect poison that people used to assassinate is not my idea of good symbolism. Anytime he used that forced word, I chuckled.
(ps. Libido was never thought of as a substance. No surprise it wasn't isolated in laboratories, Einstein).
And finally, the message.
What I gathered from the book -and let's be honest: Coelho is pretty known for resonant, life-changed messages- you must close it thinking :
"There is no such thing as sanity, only a law of majority which dictates that wearing a tie is a hint of fashion taste and not a self-strangling useless piece of cloth. Sanity is just one form of accepted insanity that got adopted by many people. There is no such thing as reality, only a percieved version of it, and is generally one that is not in our element. Drop both those illusionary notions and live as ananimal free Man, enjoy your life, please your body and don't give two damns about people around you because they're all crazy too, only in a uniformed kind of crazy. But also seek the love of others, and see death as a gateway to life and life as an early stage of death, but never fear them. Embrace your inner fool, leave your job, and live on love and fresh air and wine you can hardly afford".
It would have been such a bombarding, bigger than life message if it wasn't very self-asserting, self-important and finally bombastic.
It is presenting a very dumbed-down vision on life, making it sound as if Veronica and her lover boy won't eventually need to work in a 8 to 5 mind-numbing job to afford their champagne under the stars, and that he won't get fits of schizophrenia when she'll get old and remind him of hell rather than heaven, and that she won't tell him to notice her more than his Visions of Paradise he's spend all day working on. It implies that life is no more than a first-world problem that would be fixed by trying the new and exploring the forbidden.
If only the book ended with her actually dying and being remembered by every fool she encountered (let's assume for a second that she's not a shallow character but a one capable of touching souls and not only her body), and then making the point across that there is Life in Death as the doctor metaphorically suggested, that people change perspective and get insight from the passing of a dear one and that one's life doesn't stop when he or she dies, whether he or she believes in an afterlife or not. They remain in the hearts of those whom they inspired by living through the repetitiveness of life and the tricks of the minds and the bad turns of wind, and that only, is worth living for. Or something.
I don't feel like writing about this book anymore.
Name : Veronica décide de mourir
Writer : Paulo Coelho
Publishing year : 1998
Language : French
Type : Recommended, Novel
Recommended by : Insaf Bouqrou', Inas Laghdess
Estimated time : about 7 hours.
Main themes : Insanity, psychology, coming-of-age, liberation.
Recommended for : Hardcore Coelho fans only.
The book in a few words : First world problems meets the Alchemist.
The synopsis : A perfectly fine young lady decides that she's bored of life and tries to commit suicide, but she didn't die and she only has 5 days to rediscover life and what she's missing out on and feel regret for being a stupid perfectly fine young lady.
The Rating : Disappointing 4/10
The Review :
My oh my.
Paulo Coelho is such a thorny writer to approach. He's venerated by many "readers" and hated by other readers (notice the use of quotes). I like his comparison to Justin Beiber : Many people hate him without even listening to his music, many people hate him after listening to his music, but many, many people (impressionable 13 years old girls) think he's the best singer in the universe of all time. Because of this, when you "hate on him" you get waves of angry comments for being mean for no reason. "His music gets Grammys!" they say, and there is no tangible proof that he's overrated and he sucks and the attention he gets should be equally distributed on far more talented people who really deserve it. Defining "more talented" and "deserve" is another problem, but everyone on the other side of the fence know what it means. You just feel those people need someone who show them the light and direct them to the better ways of life.
Now this is a long paragraph for a writer of whom I've hardly read two books (one of them twice). I'm no expert in Coelho and I ain't got no time to spend on reading his books after being disappointed by this one. But other people with more time in their hands did, and they don't seem to differ from the aforementioned groups : Either hate it for being overexposed and overrated, or revere it and having all his book read and reread and shared as cute, inspiring quotes.
Before reading this book, I didn't want to put myself in any of the previous categories, I only read the Alchemist (which I liked moderately but I only gave it a 4/5 for being the first novel I've read) and I didn't want to go with the flow and pretend to be an illuminated reader who sees right through his repetitive malarkey and consider people who do like him to be shallow, inexperienced readers. (I might as well belong to those for all I know).
But now, I read Veronica, which is claimed by many to be his best work (alongside his "masterwork", the Alchemist) and a complete change of tone in contrast with many of his other books that kind of feel the same (uh oh).
So I held my hope high and opened it with all the good intentions, and I really wanted to give him a try, maybe he's greater than the sum of the inspirational quotes everybody seems to relate to.
First thing I notice: Dry style. Some may mistake that for being an "easy" or even a "smooth" read, but it is not. It's just .. dry. Oversimplified, dry writing style. It feels like you're reading an average article from a newspaper, and it's not a good thing.
There is the Minimalism that I adore (and I think helped the Alchemist to feel bare and genuine), but it's not even that. It's just a tasteless, colorless steam of words. What's more, it wasn't what the story required or needed, it was just a choice of the author. I believe that a good use of imagery and description would have helped the package in some way, but what can I say.. Coelho is a crowd-pleaser (yes, I meant that in a very negative way). In the same vein, metaphors and allegories, when feebly used, were spoon-fed to the reader. There is not figuring out or "Aha!" moments, only direct, in-your-face obvious symbolism that is explained many times throughout the book, in case the very sophisticated intellectual readers of Coelho didn't pick up on them if they weren't attentive enough the first ten times they were explained (and not dumb enough, God forbid).
Next was the heroine. And for a book to be named after and centered around one character, she was such a disappointment. I couldn't put my finger on why she just was irritating for me to try to connect to, but I guess I ultimately figured it out: she's rushed. It feels like the author didn't have an exact portrait of her before he started writing, he just kept using her as a plot device. So she was first this blatant ungrateful first-world woman who didn't have any problem except maybe being in a Coelho-created universe, she was bored and she decided to die. She decided to die because she was a pretty woman who could have all what a pretty woman can have from this life (work, love, marriage, eventual divorce (?), settling, children, all the "normal" pleasures of love), and that wasn't good enough for her.
But she's called a smart person throughout the novel, so she could have just planned a journey to change her life or live an adventure like a smart, self-conscious person would do (I will read you, Eat Pray Love), but she didn't. Veronica decided to die, decided that nothing in life is ever gonna be of interest for her although she never quit her little place and never tried to change her routine. She gave up, and that's a stupid cowardly thing to do (and she thought she was very courageous!). Now before anyone say that I don't get the mind of a suicidal or a depressive person, I can say she wasn't one. She's not a "messed up" person. She was very ordinary in every aspect of the word for the rest of the novel. She wanted to live right after meeting Zedka, which is, clue for the clueless, was becoming a friend of hers. Why didn't she try to get friends before? Beats me. She then clung to dear life like the most normal people do, and while that might have served the "message" of the book (rant below), it harmed the character integrity. And the "sexual awakening" was so .. impromptu. It popped out of nowhere, the setting was bad, the motive was nonexistent. It was pulled out of the bucket to push once again the message of the book, but it was so badly done. (For notes on how to do it correctly, see Flowers for Algernon Charlie's second "phase of growth". The whole book built up to that part, and it made perfect sense. Here we see a girl who experienced the limits of her sexual desire on her deathbed because an old woman told her about it in a meditation session .. COM'ON!). I have many inconsistencies to point out about her that I won't mention -almost every chapter draws her with different colors- which made any growth of the character seem more like a forced step down the archetype of Santiago, the protagonist of the Alchemist : a person who's lost at life, have a faithful encounter with a life changing figure (the doctor/the king), goes on a journey of self-discovery and more fateful meetings, and then achieve the Magnus Opus and become one with the universe and reaches its human peak and then find a materialistic treasure (the gold/the very pretty boy who understands you. And that's another point, she didn't find just any love, but one with a very hot dude who's an artist and is very understanding and deep. Too much for a spiritual message :v).
Secondary characters got all their half-witted full 5 pages!! I hoped they had more elaborate lives, and not all of them were pretty much .. normal poeple. Before you jump and say 'EXACTY! That's the poooiiiinnt of the book!!!!", I take back what I said. They're normal people in our definition of insanity, not the book's (that's trying so hard to rebrand insanity as "just like you, but different". Really insane poeple are nothing like the ones the book cherrypicked, but more like the many others that didn't pay attention to Veronica and stayed in the backgrounds doing backflips and eating their snot). They were all melodramatic, and every page screamed "please feel sorry for us! #CrazyPeopleAreJustLikeYou"). Zedka was almost given depth but then she was tossed away like my hope of this book being any good. The rest was truly and utterly meh, with Eduard's story being "please let me fly with my own wings" typical and Maria's mixture of many half-baked ideas (I don't know why he bothered to make up such a weak background story for her: for example he didn't make any use of her being an attorney at all except for trying to sound clever in one useless line by the end of the book, ha).
"Vitriol Or The Bitterness" was the worst combination of concept/nomenclature I encountered in literature so far. The notion of it is hilarious (I don't think laughter was the intended effect, but I hope sounding sophisticated wasn't too). To name an "ethereal substance that slowly pushes people to die of bitterness and boredom" after an instant-effect poison that people used to assassinate is not my idea of good symbolism. Anytime he used that forced word, I chuckled.
(ps. Libido was never thought of as a substance. No surprise it wasn't isolated in laboratories, Einstein).
And finally, the message.
What I gathered from the book -and let's be honest: Coelho is pretty known for resonant, life-changed messages- you must close it thinking :
"There is no such thing as sanity, only a law of majority which dictates that wearing a tie is a hint of fashion taste and not a self-strangling useless piece of cloth. Sanity is just one form of accepted insanity that got adopted by many people. There is no such thing as reality, only a percieved version of it, and is generally one that is not in our element. Drop both those illusionary notions and live as an
It would have been such a bombarding, bigger than life message if it wasn't very self-asserting, self-important and finally bombastic.
It is presenting a very dumbed-down vision on life, making it sound as if Veronica and her lover boy won't eventually need to work in a 8 to 5 mind-numbing job to afford their champagne under the stars, and that he won't get fits of schizophrenia when she'll get old and remind him of hell rather than heaven, and that she won't tell him to notice her more than his Visions of Paradise he's spend all day working on. It implies that life is no more than a first-world problem that would be fixed by trying the new and exploring the forbidden.
If only the book ended with her actually dying and being remembered by every fool she encountered (let's assume for a second that she's not a shallow character but a one capable of touching souls and not only her body), and then making the point across that there is Life in Death as the doctor metaphorically suggested, that people change perspective and get insight from the passing of a dear one and that one's life doesn't stop when he or she dies, whether he or she believes in an afterlife or not. They remain in the hearts of those whom they inspired by living through the repetitiveness of life and the tricks of the minds and the bad turns of wind, and that only, is worth living for. Or something.
I don't feel like writing about this book anymore.
Favorite passages :
I wanted to register the most pretentious lines and quote them all here back to back to give my impression of it as I was reading it. Because there were too many, I gave up.
I didn't have any favorite passages. Maybe the one he was talking about himself and his friend who told him about Veronica, that wins the most unwarranted chapter in the book.
I wanted to register the most pretentious lines and quote them all here back to back to give my impression of it as I was reading it. Because there were too many, I gave up.
I didn't have any favorite passages. Maybe the one he was talking about himself and his friend who told him about Veronica, that wins the most unwarranted chapter in the book.
