With prose that flows like liquid silver, and the narrator’s emotions like the gossamer threads of a spider’s web waving in the breeze, Paulo Coelho’s new novel is a winner. On almost every page there are observations, dialogues, thoughts about love and loss and finding and yearning and truth and the quest for God so artistically interwoven that the book is one vast fluid look at the beauty of youth and idealism. I can do no better than to let the author take over. [The narrator is a young woman Pilar who, restless about her life finds out that love transforms both memory and desire.]
“I am writing this story on the bank of the River Piedra… I write to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance…. Only then will the water extinguish what the flames have written.” p.2
“We have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries but we can never silence its voice.” p.27
In real life love has to be possible. Even if it is not returned right away, love can only survive when the hope exists that you will be able to win over the person you desire. p.33
Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again. He was able to do both well. p. 35
“I’ve been in love before. It’s like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day, you want more. You’re not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things.” p.60
I could continue but I am afraid to spoil the fun of it for those who would like to read it. Surely the worst joke-tellers are those who give away the “point” so since I do not want to join their ilk, why don’t you turn to the book itself?