Veronika Decides to Die

I must confess - I tend to like pretty much anything from trashy Mills&Boon to pretentious Salman Rushdie/Dostoevsky. Anything at all, as long as it leaves me feeling it was worth the read or if it touches a special chord somewhere within (mostly the heart, but I suppose the nether-regions for selected Mills&Boons). The point I'm trying to make is .. an author need not put a great deal of effort for me to like their books.

Enter Paulo Coelho. I absolutely hate this guy. Late last year, I had the privilege of reading 'Veronika Decides to Die' courtesy of a friend who loves him and sent me this book via air-mail (all the way from NZ) and I hated it. How this guy is a millionaire (or is Coelho a billionaire? The Internet is capped, so I'm not able to check on Google either) is beyond my comprehension. No, I take it back .. I think I know exactly why this guy is a freaking billionaire. Here starteth my review (of the book).

A Brief Synopsis:

Young girl who has everything going well for her decides to end her life but finds herself stranded in a mental hospital (or something like that) alive and kicking. Girl is told she has five days (more or less) until her heart stops beating. Girl realises value of life (and wants to live with a renewed energy) and the readers realise it was all a lie - the girl was used as an experiment whereupon she was lied to and told she only had a few days to live, so that when that anticipated death does not occur her life force will be renewed and she will continue to live her life believing it was a miracle gifted by god and it was her destiny to .. live (with another fellow depressed Prince living in the asylum .. in front of whom she masturbates thrice climaxing all three times).

[I think I would watch the movie (yes! they are making a movie out of this book starring Sarah Michelle Geller) just for the masturbating scene .. should it be allowed on screen].

What I found this book to be is nothing but a preachy-know-it-all-snobbery of a novel where the author spends all his time preaching (worse than your average organised religion folks) and preaching and preaching - how life should be, why it should be so. I might as well have picked up the Quran and read that instead. Coelho is simply more of a Pope than an author. The book felt like a pretentious crap that shoved its 'life ideal and philosophies' down my throat until I choked and spat out in disgust.

I don't pretend to understand life's blacks and whites or even the greys and neither should a literary work. I've grown accustomed to the simple fact that books are there to enlighten you and make you think .. it is not a self help guide where all the answers are churned out. So when an author comes in to establish that he knows it all, that he is the Messiah who has all the answers is nothing but an insult to .. well I don't know exactly what .. but I was furious.

Of course I understand why Coelho is popular. People are brainless morons or one in the making. The laziness takes hold and fuck all that spending time thinking about a book .. let's all read crap that already provides easy philosophies and easy answers to life .. Oh Coelho, you are the greatest, please do all the thinking for me and write more of those crap you call literary works and in turn, I shall contribute just a little bit more to your Billions.