Veronika Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho

Premise:

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, Veronika decides to die.  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.

This is the first time I’ve read a book and felt like it was literally putting my own unvoiced thoughts into words.  It was unnerving and liberating at the same time – to know that I wasn’t alone in having these thoughts and that someone so much braver than I gave those thoughts form and let them loose.  I feel at odds with this book.  I know that it’s a good, touching, revealing, and meaningful story.  But from where I stand, it is entirely too personal, perhaps because I feel too close and can relate too much to Veronika and the other characters. 

I identified most with how frustrated Veronika felt about her life – it seemed so perfect, and yet, how come she’s so unhappy?  How many times in my own life did I ask this question of myself?  Why do I keep yearning for more; where does all this dissatisfaction come from when I already have everything I need and most of what I want?  And because of this I bear this tremendous guilt for being so ungrateful for what I have when so many others in the world are truly suffering.  I wonder most every day of my life if this is my particular individual failing or if there are others who feel the same. 

The insights given by the other characters were deep and provoking as well; particularly Mari, whom I liked most of all.  She was just so hard-line and practical, clear and wise.  I think it was her character, out of all the others, that gave this book the resolution and wisdom it carries.  Zedka was strange, but she had her wise moments, too.  Eduard… I don’t know what to think of him.  He was almost like Mari but not quite.  He had everything set up for him but had decided to go against it all.  When he found out that the world refuses to accept him the way he chooses to be, he withdrew from it.  He made it sound so easy.  In the story he drew Veronika out and gave her the resolve she needed and saved himself in the process, but it all seemed too convenient to me, too cliché, if you will.   Another favourite is Dr. Igor; that despicable, underhanded monster who masterminded the whole thing for very selfish reasons.  But I did like that he himself was surprised by the unexpected outcome of his research.

Perhaps I should try to go insane myself?  Let everything go and let others think what they will.  I think it would be lovely and utterly peaceful.  If I go insane will it free me, finally?  I don’t want to pretend to be insane – I don’t want to practice it.  I want to BE it.  Those other characters in the book that used insanity as an escape seemed so stupid and cowardly.  I don’t want to be like them.  Insanity should not be an escape; it should not be an effort.

(SPOILER alert!  Don’t read this paragraph if you don’t want to know how the book ends.) I’ll say it again – I don’t know what to make of this book.  I think it’s a good read, definitely.  It was insightful and thought-provoking, sure.   Did it touch me; did it make me appreciate my own life more; did it make me see life as a miracle?  No.  Oddly enough when I think it through I feel like I read another one of those cheesy Mitch Albom, or “chicken soup” things.  Only this one had a very good literary packaging going for it which makes it a cut above the others trying to do the same thing.   I believe it would have had more of an impact and been far more credible if Veronika, realizing just how precious life was, did die in the end.  Instead it has this trite happily-ever-after-oh-life-is-such-a-miracle-riding-off-into-the-rosy-sunset ending.  I’m sure a lot of people love it this way, but to me it came out too contrived and moralistic.  But that’s just me.  I do think that I’m far too cynical.  If you’re the optimistic type, then you’d love this book.

Notable quotes from the book:

“She hated the love she had been given because it had asked for nothing in return, which was absurd, unreal, against the laws of nature… That love asking for nothing in return had managed to fill her with guilt, with a desire to fulfil another’s expectations, even if that meant giving up everything she had dreamed of for herself.”

“If anyone there… just lived their lives and let others do the same, God would be in every moment, in every grain of mustard, in the fragment of cloud that is there one moment and gone the next.  God was there, and yet people believed they still had to go on looking, because it seemed too simple to accept that life was an act of faith.”

“She would consider each day a miracle – which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences.”