Of the all the novels I’ve ever read, it’s Paulo Coelho’s work that I like most. I came across this author thru reading his work for the first time “By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept” and fell in love with his work instantly. It even got stronger when I got to read my all-time favorite “The Alchemist”. I really love this book. I even got enchanted for weeks after reading it. It inspires you to run and follow your dreams.
One thing that’s really different in Coelho’s work is that, it speaks to the soul. It has something supernatural in it, I mean, something that elevates your perspective in life. It’s very enchanting yet spiritual. He tells a very simple story. In fact very simple and ordinary but the effect is extraordinary. He makes you see things you have never seen before and grasp emotions that lifts you on another dimension, the level of the heart and the soul. I love his ironies too and how he turns simple things into extraordinary, the ugly into glorious, the minute into important, etc. His style on making his sentences are somewhat lyrical.
Other books I’ve read by the same author are the “Veronika Decides to Die”, “The Devil And Miss Pryme”, “The Pilgrimage” and the “Zahir”. They all have the same effect on me. In fact they’re all my favorite. He seemed to have a deeper understanding of life and death, love and hate, passion and suffering. Though sometimes, some of the things in the story gets weird like in “The Pilgrimage” but then again it’s fiction and you get the soul of the story or maybe those things are just imagery or illustrations for an underlying thought and emotion and it’s just that I didn’t get it so I put it on the weird criteria hehe But over all, his work is brilliant and beautiful and I really want to emulate his writing but he seemed too deep to fathom.
