Veronica Decides To Die by Paulo Coelho

 Veronica Decides To Die is a novel by Paulo Coelho. I write the review in English, though I read the book in Spanish, so it may be that many aspects of the book’s language may have disappeared in translation.

The novel deals with several significant issues impinging upon the lives of ostensibly ordinary people. But, perhaps because of social definition, perhaps via self-identification, perhaps as a result of the hand dealt by experience, these people are treated by the ordinary in extraordinary ways. Veronica and her associates are treated in very special ways indeed, receiving, amongst other things, doses of insulin high enough to incapacitate and electro-convulsive therapy designed to stimulate temporary amnesia. They are all, for the purposes of Veronica Decides To Die, inmates of an asylum.

And the location is important. The asylum, probably referred to by some as a madhouse, is in Ljubljana, Slovenia, just at the time when the former republic of Yugoslavia is in the process of breaking up. There is a strange and, certainly within these pages, little exploited parallel between the mental disintegration of these individuals and the break-up of a state that has previously sought advantage in unity and incorporation. Thus, the novel examines – though none too deeply - the relationship between sanity and madness, unity and separateness, individuality and society, personal and accepted response.

Elements of plot may be discovered by readers of the novel. But nothing is revealed by recording that interactions between four of the asylum’s inmates, Veronika, Eduard, Zedka and Mari that form the backbone of the book, along with their relationship to Doctor Igor, who is in charge of their care and also his own research project. We encounter the histories of these characters and find clues as to why they may have chosen less than conventional ways to express themselves.

And it is the developing relationship between the eponymous Veronica and Eduard, a schizophrenic young man, that forms the central thrust of the story. At the start of the book, Veronica wants to die. She is depressed. She jokes about how no one on the planet seems to have any idea where her country, Slovenia, might be, as it emerges from the conflict, pain and growing wreckage of Yugoslavia. But for Slovenia, nation status was being achieved for the first time in his modern history. It had always been part of somewhere else, perhaps like every individual was forever incorporated into some social group loosely labelled “society”. Isolated, alone, many individuals struggle to define or cope with their own individuality, a void which, unchecked or unfilled, may lead them along paths that grow unfamiliar.

In some ways, Veronika's despair at feeling alone in the world drives her to take an overdose. She survives. But she is changed, mentally and physically, and so is admitted to an asylum for treatment. It is there she meets Eduardo and others, whose individual histories have created their separation from what is perceived as normal by the rest of some vague notion called “society”. These principal characters relive some of their past experiences to illustrate what might have brought about the changes in their characters, transformations noted by others that led to their isolation.

Their stories are not unlike the unique concordance of events that were currently propelling a nation to an independence it had previously never known. It was the rest of the world that was creating the conditions, but it was Slovenia that changed. For these people something caused them to react or behave differently from the norm, hence their status, but it may have been the actions of others, or indeed circumstance that created the conditions that changed them.

A weakness of Veronika Decides To Die lies in its tendency to be both analytical and rational, without ever actually declaring itself to be rooted in either concept. Equally, by the end, this might be its strength, because there is always room for interpretation. Characters within its pages do analyse their relationship to the spiritual, the religious, and occasionally the chemically induced. They explore themselves, discover new or previously ignored aspects of themselves and are surprised in the process.

By the end, the characters have engaged. But they have apparently been fulfilling someone else’s purpose throughout, someone invested with society’s authority to observe and monitor. Whether that person is the doctor in charge of the asylum or the writer holding the pencil is an interesting question.

The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho

 

The Witch of Portobello is a novel by Paulo Coelho. Perhaps already there is already a divide. There are readers, many of them, for whom the author conjures a world of another universe, perhaps, where, inside the unknown but knowable self, anything can be discovered. Equally, there is another group for whom this platitudinous pseudo-religious self-discovery approaches the nauseous. First, the bones of plot.

Sherine Khalil was abandoned at birth by her Romanian gypsy mother, at least partially because her father was a foreigner. Whether these origins, a rejection born of a persecuted minority in a context of political oppression are relevant is an academic question, because we spend so much time inside Sherine‘s head, albeit from outside, that we often lose sight of any wider context.

Thus abandoned, the baby girl is adopted by a middle-class Lebanese couple and brought up amid the political turmoil of the Middle East in general and Lebanon’s war in particular. Neither scenario is examined in the book, though they are cited as possible influences on Sherine’s development, though specific consequences seem not to figure. Sherine renames herself Aurora, is brought up a Christian and has visions.

Aurora goes to London and university to study engineering, but drops out, marries and has a child, because she realizes that is what she really wants. The marriage breaks down and she attains the status of a single mother, a status she seems to claim as an act of martyrdom. She does several things to make ends meet before becoming an estate agent in Dubai, an activity that proves lucrative.

But throughout, there is a side to Aurora-Sherine‘s personality that is not of this material world. She associates with the Virgin Mary, the mother, and with Santa Sophia and other phenomena. By the way, we can always tell if an emergent concept is both real and transcendental because we may note it always has a capital letter even in speech. I digress…

Aurora returns to London and becomes associated with an apparently blasphemous sect based in Portobello Road, though what she is selling, apparently, is not secondhand. Amidst all the navel gazing and self-realization via universal personal discovery, there is space for religious difference. Fingers are pointed. Accusations are made. Let’s leave it there.

Sherine-Aurora’s story is told by a series of people who knew her. Criticism of the work arises because these reminiscences by different people do not really offer the different perspectives that might be expected. None of these people for instance dismiss Aurora’s claims about herself out of hand. In some ways, they are all converts.

Personally, I have just used this form in my own novel, Eileen McHugh, a life remade, so perhaps I am over-conscious of the of its potential shortcomings. For me, however, these different testimonies to the life of Sherine-Aurora were just two consistent to convince a reader they might be the recollections of a varied group of people with different memories and interests.

I began by defining to apparently opposing reactions to Paulo Coelho‘s work. Obviously, I am in the latter group, so why might I choose to read this book? Well, I read it in Spanish as a way of developing my fluency in the language. Personally, it was a means to an end and, as such, the book delivered, its calculated simplicity of style and associated simplicity of language suiting my linguistic goals perfectly.

And, in facilitating my personal goals in this way, this opening up new possibilities for my own self-expression and discovery, it may just have delivered on the message of self-realization I have apparently been keen to dismiss. It becomes an illustration of whatever an artist may have intended in creating a work, it is eventually what the recipient experiences that endures. Perhaps there is always an element looking within when we experience our universe.

Prisoners of ideology - Angels and Insects by A. S. Byatt

Angels and Insects is an intriguing pair of novellas. At one level it examines the complexities of human relationships, especially those incorporated within marriage and the family. It identifies tension, dissipates it, anticipates expectations and then seeks resolution of conflict when they are not realised.

In Morpho Eugenia, William, a suitor, pursues his beloved and she becomes his wife. They breed with regular success, but there is a darkness that separates them in their marriage, a darkness that becomes light when William comes home from the hunt unexpectedly.

In The Conjugal Angel we enter a spirit world. For the inhabitants of the world, the spirit reality is as tangible, as rational a universe as any other. It is a world with familiar landmarks that reveal themselves easily to the accepting mind. Powerfully and engagingly interpreted by an influential writer, their significance enters the participants´ assumptions, their existence never questioned.

Angels and Insects is set in the mid-nineteenth century and, as such, deals with concepts, both social and intellectual, which are quite foreign, quite removed from those of the contemporary reader. In Morpho Eugenia, we have a scientist exploring the revolutionary ideas of evolution and applying these not only to the natural world he researches, but also the private human world, both physical and emotional, that he inhabits. Needless to say, his radical ideas are not shared by many close to him. In The Conjugal Angel, we encounter a group of people motivated by a reality they all share. 

But, for the contemporary reader, it is a reality that is utterly foreign, its literature and its analysis both apparently bogus in today’s judgment. Thus, eventually Angels and Insects is a novel about ideology. It illustrates how ideological assumptions about the nature of existence can drive an individual´s and a society´s approach to life, and how it can convince people of the truth of illusion, or vice versa. And in considering the works of contemporary poets, Angels and Insects illustrate how the literature of an age can become suffused with its ideology and, indeed, how this can feed back into the substance of life to reinforce assumptions.

As ever, A S Byatt´s use of language is virtuosic, making the process of reading Angels and Insects a delight throughout. It is an ambitious project which almost achieves its design. The shortfall, however, becomes a frustration.

View this book on amazon Angels and Insects