How do we find the courage to always be true to ourselves—even if we are unsure of who we are?
That is the central question of international bestselling author Paulo Coelho's profound new work, The Witch of Portobello. It is the story of a mysterious woman named Athena, told by the many who knew her well—or hardly at all. Like The Alchemist, The Witch of Portobello is the kind of story that will transform the way readers think about love, passion, joy, and sacrifice.
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The Brazilian author PAULO COELHO was born in 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Before dedicating his life completely to literature, he worked as theatre director and actor, lyricist and journalist.
In 1986, PAULO COELHO did the pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella, an experience later to be documented in his book The Pilgrimage.
In the following year, COELHO published The Alchemist. Slow initial sales convinced his first publisher to drop the novel, but it went on to become one of the best selling Brazilian books of all time.
Other titles include Brida (1990), The Valkyries (1992), By the river Piedra I sat Down and Wept (1994), the collection of his best columns published in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S'o Paulo entitle Maktub (1994), the compilation of texts Phrases (1995), The Fifth Mountain (1996), Manual of a Warrior of Light (1997), Veronika decides to die (1998), The Devil and Miss Prym (2000), the compilation of traditional tales in Stories for parents, children and grandchildren (2001), Eleven Minutes (2003), The Zahir (2005)
During the months of March, April, May and June 2006, Paulo Coelho traveled to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella in 1986. He also held surprise book signings - announced one day in advance - in some cities along the way, to have a chance to meet his readers. In ninety days of pilgrimage the author traveled around the globe and took the famous Transiberrian train that took him to Vladivostok. During this experience Paulo Coelho launched his blog Walking the Path - The Pilgrimage in order to share with his readers his impressions.
Since this first blog Paulo Coelho has expanded his presence in the internet with his daily blogs in Wordpress (http://paulocoelhoblog.com), Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/paulocoelho) & Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Paulo-Coelho/11777366210). He is equally present in media sharing sites such as Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=paulabraconnot) and Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulo_coelho/sets) , offering on a regular basis not only texts but also videos and pictures to his readers.
From this intensive interest and use of the Internet sprang his bold new project: The Experimental Witch http://paulocoelhoblog.com/experimental-witch where he invites his readers to adapt to the screen his book The Witch of Portobello. You can still subscribe in this experiment!
Indeed Paulo Coelho is a firm believer of Internet as a new media and is the first Best-selling author to actively support online free distribution http://piratecoelho.wordpress.com of his work.
I have read quite a lot of Paolo Coelho's works, my favorites being The Alchemist and By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept. This is another compelling work by Coelho. As in most of his works, there is an enigmatic main character, in this instance a woman who is dead at the beginning of the book - the rest of the book deals with piecing her life through a series of first-person accounts. Born of Gypsy origins, she is adopted by a Lebanese couple and later calls herself Athena. She also seems blessed with spiritual powers and is filled with a certain restlessness that leads her on an amazing if unfocussed personal journey finally finding a mentor in a woman called Edda who helps her deal with her spiritual powers. The story moves along and we get to read of Athena's rise and inevitably, her demise, made compelling mostly through Coelho's consummate narrative skills. As always, Coelho's stories are about spirituality & the search for inner truth/self & will apppeal to those who are interested in the subject matter.
Paulo Coelho of international fame for his book The Alchemist has here in The Witch of Portobello has woven a very unique and compelling tale. Part of what draws the reader in is the story itself and part is the very unique way it is written. Rather than a straight forward narrative, or a dialogue or even a series of letters this is a unique narrative technique. It is written as a series of first person accounts of individuals interactions with our unusual heroine Athena aka the Witch of Portobello.
These stories, taped interviews and letters have been compiled by a narrator we do not know until the end of the story. He has decided to let Athena's story be told as other's tell it, through their own words, and with all of their emotions, anger, support, respect or disgust. What we learn from these accounts is not only is Athena a bit of an enigma, from these accounts we could almost assume that almost every person encountered a different Athena, an Athena of the making in their own mind. The way the 'biography' is written it allows us to draw our own conclusions, rather than a traditionally researched biography that is colored by the lenses that cloud the vision of the biographer. Much as each of us look at the world through a series of lenses of our experiences, and cultural biases.
Athena is a young woman who tries to fill the spaces, the silences in her life. The more she tries to fill them the more dissatisfied she becomes. Until she learns that it is the silences between the notes that make the music so powerful. When she learns to embrace the silence, the spaces, she finds a power an energy. She becomes a spiritual leader, some see her as a saint and some see her as a sinner. She is both revered and feared. A saint and a demon.... The compiled documents help us to see Athena for who she was.
So join our unknown biographer as we trace the life of a murdered young woman and journey around the world and into an unseen spiritual world. This book is better than some of Coelho's more recent offerings, and the narrative tool will draw you in and keep you turning the pages.
A warning though the book deals with earth religions and has some new age ceremonies in it, therefore it will not be for all readers.
(First Published in Imprint 2007-05-18 in the 'Book Review Column.)Read more ›
I read and enjoyed The Alchemist a few years ago, and my wife wanted me to try this one, but it sure didn't do it for me. While I'm intrigued by the story-told-by-many-viewpoints technique, there is very little story to tell for most of the book, just the vague spiritual quest of a little-characterized but seemingly very self-involved girl trying to understand why she Feels Different. She falls under the tutelage of a Pagan priestess, comes to understand she Is Different, develops a relationship with the Mother Goddess, takes on the mission to Spread the Love, flirts with martyrdom, etc. etc. I'm sincerely open to alternative religious exploration, but the belief system described here is nothing but the sort of hazy, hippy sentiment you'd hear in any freshman dorm room through a cloud of incense and dope smoke. (Dance to commune with the goddess; Take your clothes off to Really Communicate with each other; Give up your Gender Hangups to achieve Sexual Freedom... None of this is made up, by the way). The characters are never real enough for the book to be a commentary on how religion works in the real world, and the Spiritualism described is certainly not concrete enough for this to be considered a serious religious exploration, so we're left with a meandering story that's supposed to be Profound simply because the characters tell us it is. I didn't buy it.
I have enjoyed Mr. Coelho's books. This isn't one of them. Though finely crafted using interviews of key people in Athena's story (reason for my 3 rating), the plot is very thin. The new age stuff is boring; better read the authors quoted in the book that it came from. I agree with one reviewer the book is too long, and I began to scan. Athena, who is depicted as so 'gifted' takes forever to get much of anywhere at all. How to speak about spiritual journeys, much less love? It's difficult, if not impossible to make the subject truly meaningful- as Coelho's book proves. It would be much more helpful to the searcher to read Paul's letter to the Corinthians. Whatever translation you like.
I picked this up at an international airport. It was displayed at the front of the store, and included the comment: "sixty-five million readers can't be wrong" by Publishers Weekly. Tagged onto anything, this is a false but tempting statement.
It reads quickly and the subject matter is unique. The message is not new: the church is hypocritical and society enforces conformity at the expense of individuality. If a new fictional journey is more appealing to you than a new message, then this is a book that makes you curious about what happens in the end. And if you read it, there appears to be tens of millions of people you can discuss it with!
