Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who's on his way to see a girl he once met and fell a little in love with. Before he gets there, however, some stuff happens that I can only vaguely recall. Something about a fortune teller, who tells him that a dream he had about the pyramids in Egypt will lead him to a great treasure. A mysterious man who turns out to be something more convinces Santiago to abandon his ordinary and comfortable life as a shepherd and begin his quest - the pursuit of his Personal Legend.

I'm making a conscious effort to get through more books in my collection that I figure I'll probably be okay with either selling or donating when I'm done. This seemed like a good candidate - I picked up a copy ages ago at a conference, and while it seemed vaguely interesting, it wasn't the sort of thing I'd normally read. When I saw that my library owned the audiobook version via Overdrive, I figured that'd be the perfect way to get through it. I'd listen to it, use my paper copy to help me with any name spellings or other details in my review, and then offload it.

Audiobook was probably the best way to go. Jeremy Irons' voice was wonderful to listen to and made the four hours of listening time almost bearable.

That said, I hated this book. Hated it. Had it actually been a fantasy adventure about a boy on a quest for treasure, I might have liked it a bit more, but in reality this was more a self-help book in story form.

Its basic message was this: if you listen to your heart, follow your dreams, and go after your goals with everything you've got, there's nothing you can't accomplish. The entire universe will assist you. The only thing that can stop you is fear of failure.

It's a cruel message. It says "If you're not managing to succeed at this thing you're trying so hard to accomplish, it means that the problem is you. You're somehow still not doing enough, not trying enough, not wanting it enough." It's such an insidious lie, and it made me angry that Coelho had chosen to build an entire world around it.

Santiago really could accomplish anything he wanted to, just by putting his whole heart and soul into his quest. Any other boy might have starved to death after selling all his sheep to go after a treasure he'd seen in a dream, but not Santiago. Every experience he had and every person he met was just another lesson or sign that would lead him to his ultimate goal, his Personal Legend. Thieves left him penniless and theoretically hungry, but he was never truly in danger of starving as long as he kept his goal in sight. At one point he was beaten, but the pain might as well have been a light bruising for all the attention Santiago paid it. Everything always came back to his stupid Personal Legend, the only thing that seemed to leave any sort of lasting impact on him, except maybe Fatima. But more on Fatima later.

In the real world, a person can put everything they have into their goal, pursue their dreams with all their heart and soul, do everything right...and still not succeed. This is not an indicator that they didn't work hard enough or want their dream badly enough, as The Alchemist would suggest. Maybe they didn't have a rich friend or family member who could give them an interest-free loan. Maybe they got sick and suddenly had their health and medical bills to worry about. Maybe they had a family to support and didn't want to be complete jerks towards their loved ones (families didn't seem to factor into this whole Personal Legend thing at all - basically, if they really loved you and supported you, they'd take care of themselves until you accomplished your Personal Legend).

Which brings me back to Fatima, the young woman of the desert Santiago fell in love with (no relation to the young woman he was initially kind of in love with but utterly forgot later on). Her Personal Legend, if I remember correctly, was Santiago. All she had to do was wait in the desert for him. That's it. Why did Santiago's Personal Legend involve a multi-year quest that he had to actively participate in, while Fatima's just required her to exist and be pretty and unmarried? And then, when Santiago left to pursue his Personal Legend, she had to sit and patiently wait for him to come back, however long that might take. They had only spoken a few times and definitely weren't married, so she was basically just waiting for a near-stranger. It was Coelho's version of a soulmate romance. Man, I wish I'd been reading an actual soulmate romance novel rather than this book.

All in all, I don't recommend this, not even with Jeremy Irons' wonderful narration.

 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I loved it. I had always assumed that I would hate it, knowing that it was about an older man taking advantage of a very young girl. What I hadn't realized was that it is a book knowingly written from the villain's point of view. I had thought it would be all excuses and romanticism. That stuff is there, sure, but thinly veiled so that the read may hear HH's excuses to himself and still see right through them.

Unfortunately, I do also recognize how parts could easily be represented as Lolita's complicity in her situation, but these would fail to take into consideration either her initial naivete (which many girls that young have had about older men), her recognition of a situation that is quite hopeless, or the significant possibility of Stockholm's syndrome. Of course, there is also the fact that HH is writing in the first person and everything about her is therefore subject to his interpretation.

The challenge of the book, and part of its genius perhaps, is seeing Lolita herself outside of his interpretation. It makes me want to see the movie and how the actress interprets Lolita's actions. I've read other books by men that are associated more with the way women are perceived by them then women actually are (Great Expectations and The Great Gatsby for starters) that should do the same thing but I had unfortunately not gone into those prepared for their intentional misrepresentation of my gender and hated them on the first read. (I do owe both a reread since I was told the opinion on it that the women were intentionally written the way they were to point out some men's lack of realization that we are in fact fully three dimensional beings)

I do hate the definition and use of the word "nymphet" in practical use but I get why the author included it. I thought it really helped deliver the delusional nature of Humbert's vision of Lolita and the way he romanticized and lusted after girls that were far too young. I did, however, appreciate the inclusion of Humbert's background and some notable things within it. Specifically, those things are the lapses in mental health, his attempts at staying within decency, and his prior love, Annabel. I don't know enough about psychology to have an informed opinion on whether her death really contributed to his affinity for young girls but it made an interesting hypothesis on the part of the afflicted.

It was interesting, and super creepy, to see the way his ability to control Lolita's life played into both his hunger for her and many of her responses to him. The progression of their "relationship" was again mostly creepy but interesting in that way we only can be in fiction when it's not real people that are being hurt. His power over her made him increasingly tyrannical as power has been historically shown to do.

The whole story climaxes in such a way that is so consistent with the character's personalities and strangely satisfying in it's own way. I'd rather not spoil it, though anyone could easily look up the whole synopsis on Wikipedia if interested, it's linked about anyway. I listened to a copy from the library that was read by Jeremy Irons who also played the protagonist in the 1997 film.

I had finally picked it up to listen to as my hold on Reading Lolita in Tehran finally came through, which is also proving to be a great book and gave me some necessary insight into Nabokov's writing style and Humbert's character.

The best novel I've read in the past year. The wittiest and perhaps the saddest. I would be terribly jealous that anyone born in Russia could master the English language to this extent, but it is said English was spoken freely in his childhood household. A work of staggering genius.

 

 

"Outside of marriage, your Victorian gentleman could look forward to 2.4 fucks a week," actor Mike coolly calculates after his screen partner (and lover) Anna has read to him the statistics according to which, while London's male population in 1857 was 1 1/4 million, the city's estimated 80,000 prostitutes were receiving a total of 2 million clients per week. And frequently, Anna adds, the women thus forced to earn their living came from respectable positions like that of a governess, simply having fallen into bad luck, e.g. by being discharged after a dispute with their employer and their resulting inability to find another position.

 

This brief dialogue towards the beginning of this screenplay based on John Fowles's 1969 novel succinctly illustrates both the fate that would most likely have been in store for its title character Sarah, had she left provincial Lyme Regis on Dorset's Channel coast and gone to London, and the Victorian society's moral duplicity: For while no virtues were regarded as highly as honor, chastity and integrity; while no woman intent on keeping her good name could even be seen talking to a man alone (let alone go beyond that); and while marriage – like any contract – was considered sacrosanct, rendering the partner who deigned to breach it an immediate social outcast, all these rules were suspended with regard to prostitutes; women who, for whatever reasons, had sunk so low they were regarded as nonpersons and thus, inherently unable to stain anybody's reputation but their own.

 

What is there to like?

♦ "Read by Jeremy Irons." This actually is the reason I listened to it, so: mission accomplished!

♦ The primary message, that you should seek out what is most important for you to do with your life, and do whatever you can to accomplish it or else you will probably spend your life dissatisfied and/or regretful, is something that makes perfect sense to me (but see below).

 

What is there not to like?

♦ That primary message, although I agree with it, seems like it is such common sense that it doesn't need to be stated? It's not a compelling or surprising message, so I can't really think of this as a compelling or surprising work of literature.

♦ Additionally, I have a hard time understanding why it would be convincing or helpful for people to be told that pursuing their life's purpose is predetermined by the universe, and that they have an obligation to the universe to pursue it. That seems like the opposite of empowering.

 

Overall Recommendation: Optional (="meh")