Submitted By:

Maria Channa
Reg No:
04021813025
Submitted To:
Mam Sobia Rana
Assignment Topic:
Book Review
Book Review:

Paulo, Coelho .(1998).VERONIKA DECIDES to DIE .Brazil.Haper

Collins .210 pages. paper back.
In Veronika Decides to Die, Paulo Coelho takes the reader on a
distinctly modern journey to find meaning in a culture
overshadowed by angst, soulless routine, and pervasive conformity.
Based on events in Coelho's own life, Veronika Decides to
Die questions the meaning of madness and celebrates individuals
who do not fit into patterns society considers to be normal. Poignant
and illuminating, it is a alluring painting of a young woman at the
crossroads of despair and liberation, and a poetic, passionate
appreciation of each day as a renewed opportunity.
Coelho Paulo worked as lyrics writer ,journalist and theatre artist.
He is the best known for his novel the Alchemist .Paulo Coelho writes
philosophical and mystical fiction ,if those are genres. And his
writing styles in this novel is that sentences too long and un widely,
clumsy. Not clear enough compared to author’s other works but his
writings are the big reservoirs of vocabulary and also creativity.
It is psychological fiction. In this novel the message has a great
depth and main idea about life. The story begins with Slovenian
woman Veronika who decides to kill herself she took the over dose
of sleeping pills. Naturally Veronika is stunned when she does wake
up at Villete, a local mental hospital, where the staff informs her that
she has, in fact, partially succeeded in achieving her goal. While the
overdose didn't kill Veronika immediately, the medication has
damaged her heart so severely that she has only days to live.
The story follows Veronika through the intense week of self-
discovery that ensues. To her surprise, Veronika finds herself drawn
to the confinement of Villete and its patients, who, each in his or her
individual way, reflect the heart of human experience. In the
heightened state of life's final moments, Veronika discovers things
she has never really allowed herself to feel before: hatred, fear,
curiosity, love, and sexual awakening. She finds that every second of
her existence is a choice between living and dying, and at the
eleventh hour emerges more open to life than ever before.
According to Paulo Coelho, “One woman's journey toward carving
out a meaningful away ingrained societal expectations.” (1998:7)
The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait
for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with
what we encounter. (Coelho, 187)
The following words of book touched my soul and made me fall in
more love with my life. "Every second of existence is a choice we
have to make between living and dying .This is a moving and
uplifting song to life ,one that reminds us that every moment in our
lives is special and precious."
In this novel I don’t like the brief pointless appearance of Paulo
Coelho in the beginning of story to tell that it is based on his own
experience seems unsatisfactory to me on that time my mind was
divert i think , i imagine about Veronika's life.