{"id":5376,"date":"2014-08-25T11:16:23","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T11:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5376"},"modified":"2014-08-28T11:28:58","modified_gmt":"2014-08-28T11:28:58","slug":"adultery-by-paulo-coelho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5376","title":{"rendered":"Adultery by Paulo Coelho"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Hutchinson UK, Knopf US<\/strong><\/p>\n

304pp\/272pp<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Coles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paulo Coelho\u2019s huge fan base, earned from The Alchemist<\/em> (which alone has sold 65 million copies) and his fourteen other titles which together have sold some 150 million copies worldwide, will no doubt be happily anticipating the publication of his new novel Adultery.<\/em> And the good news for them is that, as with The Alchemist<\/em>, the book is a simple and soulful parable. At a time when so many things appear complicated and insoluble, part of Coelho\u2019s appeal must lie in the simplicity of his message. Adultery<\/em> tells a story which demonstrates Coelho\u2019s take on a metaphysical \u2018truth\u2019: in order to return to your present place, psychologically stronger and in a better soul state, you have to embark on a journey with no guarantees of a good outcome.<\/p>\n

Coelho has certainly battled his way to bestsellerdom. Born in Brazil in 1947, he always wanted to be a writer. His parents, however, thought he was anti-social and psychotic and had him put into a mental asylum three times. On his release, he became a hippie and then a best-selling lyricist but the Brazilian military regime, which found his lyrics subversive, imprisoned and tortured him. The turning point in his life came when he later embarked on the five-hundred-mile pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. \u2018At the end, I thought I would either forget my dream or write a book.\u2019\u00a0 That first book was the The Pilgrimage,<\/em> a word-of-mouth success.<\/p>\n

Coelho believes that the kind of dissatisfaction that can lead to adultery is a soul sickness. His protagonist, Linda, is a married woman whose restlessness finds its natural resting place in adultery. Linda lives and works in Geneva as a journalist, using the cover of her work to re-engage with the politician Jacob Konig, whom she kissed as a teenager. Although having the \u2018perfect life\u2019, Linda feels dissatisfied and suffers from an all-consuming angst that she cannot justify even to herself.\u00a0 She is compulsively drawn to see her wish to take a lover through to its possibly destructive end, engineering the adulterous moments, enjoying the thrill they give her. Eventually, repenting of this, she spends a weekend away, hang-gliding, with her husband and it is this existential experience that allows her to transcend her dilemmas. So, asks Coelho, why does Linda act as she does?\u00a0 And of course the answer \u2013 as any reader of his books knows \u2013 lies not directly within the apparent question, but in a \u2018soul\u2019 answer.<\/p>\n

Linda is an unconvincing character who does not suffer any negative consequences from having committed adultery. There is a feeling that Coelho\u2019s storyline is merely a backdrop for him to punctuate with his beliefs and the conclusions that he has reached about the meaning of life. Presumably his loyal readership will accept this narrative in order to connect with these beliefs, but for others, reading Adultery <\/em>can be quite jarring.<\/p>\n

An example of this comes when the author interrupts Linda\u2019s first person narration, which drives the story, to speak in his authorial voice: \u2018After three years of marriage, the person already knows what the other wants and thinks\u2026\u00a0 Sex goes from being a passion to a duty\u2026\u00a0 Women hang out and brag of their husbands\u2019 insatiable fire, which is nothing but an outright lie. Everyone knows this but no one wants to be left behind.\u2019\u00a0 And later, towards the conclusion of the book, Coelho appears again, to say: \u2018Those who know how to love Truth, rejoice with the truth, and do not fear it, because sooner or later it redeems everything. They seek the Truth with a clear, humble mind lacking prejudice or intolerance \u2013 and are ultimately satisfied with what they find.\u2019<\/p>\n

Reading Adultery <\/em>reminded me of walking through a cold sea and occasionally finding warm patches. It is a moral tale but without the depth of a tale convinced about its own morality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Coles<\/p>\n

The good news for Coelho is that, as with The Alchemist<\/em>, this book is a simple and soulful parable. At a time when so many things appear complicated and insoluble, part of Coelho\u2019s appeal must lie in the simplicity of his message. Adultery tells a story which demonstrates Coelho\u2019s take on a metaphysical \u2018truth\u2019: in order to return to your present place, psychologically stronger and in a better soul state, you have to embark on a journey with no guarantees of a good outcome […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5376"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5387,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376\/revisions\/5387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}