Veronika Decides To Die
vBy Paulo Coelho
vReview by Scott Sobocinski, Yankton Community Library
Who is Veronika, and why does she want to die?
Both questions are answered right in the first chapter of this book by
Paulo Coelho, an internationally bestselling author most famous for
The Alchemist. Veronika is a young and beautiful woman living in
Slovenia, working as a librarian (woo!), and her life is on the up and
up. However, the trouble with her bright future
is that she can clearly picture the rest of her life,
and it makes her want to skip to the end. As
she consumes 4 packs of sleeping pills, and a
dark void and a strange sense of empowerment
washes over her, she knows that she’s escaped
her depression, and a sequence of societyapproved behaviors that she is reluctant to call
“her life.”
When Veronika awakens in a psychiatric
hospital strapped to a bed, she learns that her
suicide worked, but not with the intended effect.
Her heart has suffered irreversible damage, and
she will die at some point in the next few days.
What follows is an experimental
psychological treatment, along with her
failed attempts to interact as little as possible
with the other patients in the hospital. They
are intrigued by Veronika, and initiate
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conversations with her that seem irrational on the surface, but cause
her to question her life and everything she thought she knew. For
example, one mental patient claims that “collective madness is called
sanity,” and that “normal” behavior could be any type of behavior, as
long as enough people are accepting of it. Inspired by the other mental
patients, Veronika uses her last days on earth to
speak out and act out like she never has before.
This book is a whirlwind of revelations
about life, sanity, and human emotion. There
is humor and sadness, conviction and angst,
regrets and fantasies, and of course, the flatout weird. There is one sexual episode that is
very awkward, and is one of Veronika’s most
vulnerable, yet empowering moments. With
nothing left to lose, she gets comfortable enough
to explore her soul and embrace the messy
things that make us human. Veronika may be
dying, but she also discovers what it means to
live.
Coelho is a master at exploring emotional
landscapes, and I wondered how he could write
such believable characters. Then I learned he
was once a mental patient himself. Coelho was
born into a very traditional family in Brazil in
the late 1940s, and living under an oppressive
military government, his insatiable desire to
read (and to write) concerned his parents, and
was seen as severely antisocial behavior. For
this, his parents committed him to an asylum
when he was just 17 years old, where he escaped a number of times
before being officially released at the age of 20.
If you’re looking for something that celebrates the inner lives we all
have, then stop at the library for this book, or others written by Paulo
Coelho! n