| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A haunting read of a young woman's spiritual journey,
This review is from: The Witch of Portobello (Hardcover)
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.
56 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
New Age-y Mush,
By
This review is from: The Witch of Portobello (Hardcover)
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.
31 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Witch captivates,
This review is from: The Witch of Portobello (Hardcover)
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.)
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
