“Veronika Decides to Die” by Paulo Coelho – What is Happiness?

Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho (Book cover)
Paulo Coelho, even though he has started to publish books relatively late in his life, has become quite known for being willing to explore heavier and more controversial themes, and in Veronika Decides to Die he does so inspiring himself from his own life.

The story starts off by presenting Veronika, a woman by all measures should be happy: she is young, beautiful, popular, has a lot of friends, a loving family, boyfriends, and a job that she actually kind of likes.

However, she never exactly feels complete, despite everything being seemingly perfect. And so, on a cold November morning, she decides to kill herself by overdosing on pills. However, she wakes up not in the afterlife but in a mental hospital, where some bad news are given to her: she only as a few days left to live.

Needless to say, this is one of Paulo’s more tragic works of writing, and yet, somehow it still manages to be uplifting. Paulo doesn't just take the beaten path and looking into how Veronika starts to value each day she has left. Instead, he uses that situation in order to explore a few essential questions, most notably: what is it to be mad, and what is it to be happy?

What perspective should we have of life every day?

Are we conditioned by society to believe we are happy once we have crossed certain milestones?

How valuable is life, really? What do we live for?

Being a true Paulo Coelho novel, the answers aren't given to you straight up, although the language in this novel is easy and simple to understand. The answers to the many layers of philosophical questions are provided more or less through thoughts, actions, and events which revolve around Veronika.

Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho (Book cover)
More precisely, Paulo gives you his answer to those questions, and tells you to go on your journey to find them for yourself.

There are no universal answers to those questions; each person interprets them differently in light of his or her own life and experience. If deep and philosophical readings are your thing, you should definitely have a crack at Veronika Decides to Die.


Paulo Coelho (Author)

Paulo Coelho


Personal site

Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian novelist and lyricist, sometimes known by the name of Paul Rabbit. His unusual and deeply-moving novels have made of him one of the most widely-read authors today, earning him an array of international awards, including the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. His most famous novel, The Alchemist, has been translated in over 67 languages to date.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

“The Locked Door” by Freida McFadden – Roots of a Lost Innocence

Image
  Freida McFadden has been quietly writing some exciting and original thrillers in her spare time from being a practicing physician, and The Locked Door is one of her latest offering in the genre.  It tells the story of Nora, a surgeon and daughter of a serial killer now in jail, who sees her life assaulted from the dark as someone begins to recreate her father's work with the exact same signature.
Read more

“The Lost Colony” by A.G. Riddle – A New Home Among the Stars

Image
A.G. Riddle's Long Winter Trilogy Series is one many of us will remember for the amazing story it brings of humanity's last stand against an overwhelming enemy in times of hopelessness. In The Lost Colony , the third book in the series, we follow James and Emma on their own respective struggles as humanity tries to settle itself on a new planet with an unseen danger none could have foreseen.
Read more

“Winter World” by A.G. Riddle – Ice Age from the Void

Image
A.G. Riddle is a true literary explorer seeking to push humanity to its limits and beyond, setting them on a desperate collision course with something beyond its understanding in Winter World . With a sudden ice age dawning on humanity entire swathes of land become uninhabitable and people begin dropping like flies, with anarchy reigning supreme. Looking to the stars for a miraculous solution, the remnants of humanity find a massive mysterious object floating near Mars ...whatever it is, our civilization's hopes of survival rest entirely in its hands.
Read more

“The Girl on the Stairs” by Barry Ernest – The Small Thorn you Can’t Ignore

Image
Girl on the Stairs , by Barry Ernest and with a foreword written by David Lifton, is an exploration of one specific aspect of the JFK assassination. More precisely, it looks into what a little girl by the name of Victoria Adams saw on that day while standing in the staircase of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald was supposedly making his escape.  Actually, it is more about what she didn’t see than what she did see. Victoria was on the staircase Oswald supposedly used, at the exact same time he supposedly used it. If he were to be there, even the little girl she was, Victoria would have noticed a nervous man quickly running down the stairs. However, she says that on that day, she was alone there, with nobody to be found, especially Oswald.
Read more

“Three Comrades” by Erich Maria Remarque – The Other Side of the Barricade

Image
The two World Wars have been documented, discussed and depicted from virtually every perspective imaginable, ranging from small children caught in a crossfire all the way the leaders of each country. However, it seems that here is a startlingly small amount of attention dedicated to the small hiatus period between the two wars, a time during which many changes came to pass in Germany in a very short amount of time.
Read more