The Winner Stands Alone By Paulo Coelho

  AUTHOR- Paulo Coelho

PUBLISHED- 2008

ISBN – 978-0-00-731868-1

GENRE- Crime Fiction/ Thriller

SYNOPSIS- “If you love someone, you must be prepared to set them free.”

Igor Malev has one thing on his mind - his ex-wife Ewa. He's handsome, rich, and effortlessly personable - but she left him for a successful fashion designer, a sting he's never recovered from.

So he travels to the glamorous Cannes International Film Festival where they'll be appearing, intent on winning back her love. But Igor is a man of rare intensity and cold intelligence - and this is to be no ordinary reconciliation. For Igor made a promise to destroy whole worlds to get to his beloved.

EXCERPT- “The Beretta Px4 compact pistol is slightly larger than a mobile phone, weighs around 700 grams and can fire ten shots. Small, light, invisible when carried in a pocket, its small calibre has one enormous advantage: instead of passing through the victim’s body, the bullet hits bones and smashes everything in its path.”

       “Whenever someone dies, a part of the universe dies too. Everything a person felt, experience and saw dies with them, like tears in the rain.” 

       "People are never satisfied. If they have a little, they want more. If they have a lot, they want still more. Once they have more, they wish they could be happy with little, but are incapable of making the slightest effort in that direction.”

                    

KOUSTABH 'QUETZALCOATL' says- How much can you love someone and how far will you go for love?? Seems a cheesy enough question from the back alley of movies, doesn’t it? But this is exactly what Paulo Coelho takes up, and effectively turns topsy-turvy, with the backdrop of glamour and what one would call as the ‘elite’ super class. In the seemingly exciting but divided grounds (both of mind and character) of the Cannes Film Festival, it is a story of a Russian Millionaire Igor (who was formerly in the soviet army, and later built his fortune on cell phones) and his idea to kill random people as a sign for his love towards his ex-wife Ewa.

       This is not a typical crime thriller, because this is not your typical author. The thrill here is not about the killer or his motives (that is cleared in the first few pages), but about the victims and their connection with the world of the book. Paulo Coelho delves into the mind of all the characters and wrenches out a well of emotions, ideas, and past which are as various as the characters themselves. The characters are usually not ‘grey’ (exception of course is Igor), thus making them easier to understand. From the sweet street hawker girl who sold amulets, to a high end director, a struggling actress and a girl on the path of a successful modeling career all have dreams and ambitions. So have Igor, Ewa and her new husband (and fashion magnate) Hamid, though all in different directions. But it is when dreams, love and ambition turns sour and turn into obsession and greed that the reality of murder and sabotage comes out.

      As the name itself suggests The Winner does Stands Alone, because in the fervent desire to win one seems to loose all morality and starts building a perverted vision of the world and its happenings. In the murky waters of superiority and fascinating water of dreams, one often comes to realize that one is quite alone, not in body but in the soul!!

       What strikes me best is Igor, the anti-hero, is a cold blooded murderer with a heart (now that’s weird, eh??). He chats with his victims and understand their role in the wider world. As Coelho says each person is a world in himself/ herself and it is the worlds that Igor wants to destroy as a gift and reminder to his wife, who seems to either ignore them or be too afraid to do anything. Amongst the lanes of Cannes one is transported yet and again to different pasts which has culminated in the present scenario. And the ingenuity of the murders is also a testosterone boost for some readers (Muahahaha)!!

       Being such a complex book with an array of characters makes ‘The Winner Stands Alone’ quite long. Unlike Coelho’s short and philosophically shocking books, this goes on almost forever. And this is exactly what destroys its perfect charm. The thrills are few and discussions on morality and mortality way too much. By the end of the book one really gets desperate for it to end. But beware, it ends with a mind boggling conclusion that I, for one, never perceived.

       So yeah it’s enormous (in comparison to other Coelho books), but it presents forth a very different scheme of both Paulo Coelho style and thriller novel. A must read for Coelho fans, it also must be a part of readers who do serious reading.

       Keep Reading Boys and Girls!!

P.S. - This book review was requested by Smita, and I hope she likes it as do the others.        

My Rating – 4.3 / 5 stars

PRICE – Rs. 273 (Flipkart Price)

The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho

                                                  

AUTHOR- Paulo Coelho

PUBLISHED- 2007

ISBN – 978-0-00725744-7

GENRE- Fiction / Philosophy

SYNOPSIS- How do we find the courage to be true to ourselves- even if we are unsure of who we are?

      That is the central question posed by Paulo Coelho’s riveting work, The Witch of Portobello. It is the story of Athena, a mysterious young woman born in Romania, raised in Beirut and living in London. Her life is told by the many who knew her well- or hardly at all.

EXCERPT- ‘No one places her dreams in the hands of those who might destroy them. No one, that is, but Athena.’ – Heron Ryan, Journalist

‘Whoever drinks this water once can never quench her thirst at other springs.’ –Deidre O’Neill, known as Edda

‘In my world, and in the world of those I lived with, this (note: Vampires) was absurd, nonsensical, unacceptable.’ – Heron Ryan, Journalist  

‘Because God the Father is associated with the rigour and discipline of worship, whereas the Mother Goddess shows the importance of love above and beyond all the usual prohibitions and taboos.’ – Antoine Locadour, historian, ICP, France

‘My child, I’ve been excluded too. It’s a very long time since they’ve allowed me in there (note: The Church).’- Father Giancarlo Fontana imagining what Jesus might have said to Athena

KOUSTABH 'QUETZALCOATL' says- I start with a very controversial doubt I have in my mind for a long time. Why isn’t Paulo Coelho getting nominated for Nobel Prize for literature??

       Well leaving all that thoughts to the genius’ sitting in the Nobel selection committee, I would come back to the book. To be very frank this book isn’t the best work by Paulo Coelho. When you have read the Alchemist, Eleven Minutes or even Veronika Decides to die (an excellent review given on that by Pulkit), this story seems to pale in comparison. The reason, if you ask me, would be that the story line is too random (it getting sllllloooow somewhere and fast in other pages) and without much evolution. For those of you, who think that this is a book about magic and witch hunting, well its not!!

       It’s a story about an orphan girl Sherine Khalil who renames herself Athena (the Greek goddess of wisdom). One would ask WHY?? But answers are not provided in the mundane realm, you have to go beyond your everyday humdrum to understand this and the whole book, a process which Mr. Coelho masters in and makes him one of my favorite authors (though here it is dragged a bit more than what’s comfortable).

       The book starts after the death of Athena, and the author is trying to form an image of her out of recollections (reminds me of Márquez’s ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’, superbly reviewed by Arpita). But what raise it to a new pedestal are the innumerable characters pitching in their opinions, even those who barely knew her and even those who hated her. Her unending search for something (which one can interpret as desires, redemption, truth, and questions like who am I or anything else for that matter) is what fuels the storyline and makes her a memorable character. From wild dance and calligraphy to achieve peace, to her search for her true mother, to learning the religion of the Goddess and then teaching others to become one of the most controversial spiritual leader in London.

       A book for all those avid fans of Paulo Coelho, and also for those who wants to open their vista to anew horizon, this novel will pinch out a little bit of your time but in return, I can assure you, will provide many eye openers in this new era of questions and answers. As the editor wrote, “Like The Alchemist, this is a kind of story that will transform the way readers think about love, passion, joy and sacrifice.”

       Though it cannot be strictly compared to books like ‘The Alchemist’, yet it definitely deserves a chance to be read, if only for the sake of something diverse from regular fiction.

       I hope you all Keep reading and commenting!!  

           

My Rating – 3.3/ 5 stars

PRICE – INR 239 (Filpkart Price)

Veronika Decides To Die - Paulo Coelho

AUTHOR - PAULO COELHO

BEST-SELLERS - The Alchemist, Brida, The Winner Stands Alone

SYNOPSIS - Twenty-four-year-old Veronika seems to have everything -- youth and beauty, boyfriends and a loving family, a fulfilling job. But something is missing in her life. So, one cold November morning, she takes a handful of sleeping pills expecting never to wake up. But she does -- at a mental hospital where she is told that she has only days to live. Inspired by events in Coelho's own life, Veronika Decides to Die questions the meaning of madness and celebrates individuals who do not fit into patterns society considers to be normal. Bold and illuminating, it is a dazzling portrait of a young woman at the crossroads of despair and liberation, and a poetic, exuberant appreciation of each day as a renewed opportunity.

QUOTES -

• “There is always a gap between intention and action.”

• “Nothing in this world happens by chance.”

• “God knows the past, the present and the future. In that case, he had placed her in this world with the full knowledge that she would end up killing herself, and he would no longer shocked by her actions.”

• “In adolescence she thought it was too early to choose, now in youth she was convinced it was too late to change.”

• “'If God exists, and I truly don't believe he does, he will know that there are limits to human understanding. He was the one who created this confusion in which there is poverty, injustice, greed and loneliness. He doubtless had the best of intentions. but the results have proved disastrous; if God exists, He will be generous with those creatures who chose to leave this Earth early, and he might even apologize for having made us spend time here.'”

• “Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to.”

• “we lived together like fish in an aquarium, contended because someone threw us food when we needed it, and as we could, whenever we wanted to, see the world outside through the glass”

• “An awareness of death encourages to live more intensely.”

• “Stay insane, but behave like normal people. Run the risk of being different, but learn to do so without attracting attention. Allow the real “I” to reveal itself. It’s what you are, not what others make of you.”

• “A schizophrenic is a person who already has a natural tendency to absent himself from this world.”

PULKIT SPEAKS -

A Novel of Redemption;

I read this book almost an year back, when it was recommended to me by my soul sister. She had been increasingly getting worried about me in those days, due to my severe mood swings and emotional outbursts on status updates and blog posts. On being pushed rigorously for the same, I purchased a copy of it. It was a slow starter, I had read alchemist by the same author previously and thus I managed to held on to the plot of this one and the writing style which soon gathered momentum, and took the reader i.e. me to a journey of self discovery and answers. Each character is unique and fresh, Dealing with dilemmas of life which are common to almost all of us, and within the course of the book, they get answers to those dilemmas, simultaneously answering our own set of personal riddles.
The writer successfully manages to set up an analogy between regularity and sadness. It establishes the connect of love and compromise, as well as madness and liberation in the most amazing of manners. This book near its end, hits you hard with slaps of reality and truth right on your face, and reminds you of the life that is present in every moment going by right at this point of your life. Spritual in many ways, and enlighteningly fascinating in others, This is a master read for all those who think a lot and analyze life way too much. Every such reader can derive a lot of new things out of every page and every line. Brilliant and thought provoking, I am glad I read it, at the right time and thus enjoyed it the most that can be.

RATING - 4/5 - Strictly recommended for people who ponder more at day today basis on the meaning of life, A must read for people suffering with depression/Insomnia and mood swings, I guess that included 90 percent of online community of ours ;)

PRICE - $10.17 , Online purchase from Amazon