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A review by sarahetc
Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho
1.0
Veronika does decide to die. The title won't lead you astray. But why she does is so absolutely pointless and banal it could only be constructed and narrator by a person who was so steeped in postmodernism-- all demands for immediate and constant personal satisfaction and contempt for anything remotely bourgeois or traditional-- that to actually write this nonsense down seemed like a good idea, an edifying one! And that's really all it is: Veronika isn't perfectly, transcendentally euphoric (happiness being rejected for its proletarian associations) so death is the obvious course. Obviously.
But it wouldn't be ironic if that were the end of the story and so there is 95% more book to convince Veronika that she does have something to live for! Oh, spoiler! Did you not see that coming? Duh. And that process involves doubling down on the pursuit of immediate and transcendental euphoria. Veronika's fellows at the mental hospital encourage her to look ever more deeply inside herself (a self, remember, that was shallow enough to attempt suicide because it was feeling pretty meh) for reasons to live: play the piano! Masturbate! Masturbate furiously next to a piano while a schizophrenic watches!
And that sums it up: life is art! Life is sex! Sexy art! Arty sex! Oh and some friends with panic attacks. And schizophrenia isn't a real thing-- it's just what your family says you are when you want to pursue a non-bourgeois career like painter, or novelist. This novel is insipid and insulting. It trivializes real mental illness. It is written by and for a type of person for whom life must be a series of ever-escalating thrills and dramatics; for whom culture is something to be imploded and artificially synthesized in equal parts; for whom there is a general sense that life is lacking and must be harangued into showering individuals with everything they want, all the time. In short, the baseless, pointless, purposeless and ultimately useless life pleasure principle, writ large and in Portugese.
But it wouldn't be ironic if that were the end of the story and so there is 95% more book to convince Veronika that she does have something to live for! Oh, spoiler! Did you not see that coming? Duh. And that process involves doubling down on the pursuit of immediate and transcendental euphoria. Veronika's fellows at the mental hospital encourage her to look ever more deeply inside herself (a self, remember, that was shallow enough to attempt suicide because it was feeling pretty meh) for reasons to live: play the piano! Masturbate! Masturbate furiously next to a piano while a schizophrenic watches!
And that sums it up: life is art! Life is sex! Sexy art! Arty sex! Oh and some friends with panic attacks. And schizophrenia isn't a real thing-- it's just what your family says you are when you want to pursue a non-bourgeois career like painter, or novelist. This novel is insipid and insulting. It trivializes real mental illness. It is written by and for a type of person for whom life must be a series of ever-escalating thrills and dramatics; for whom culture is something to be imploded and artificially synthesized in equal parts; for whom there is a general sense that life is lacking and must be harangued into showering individuals with everything they want, all the time. In short, the baseless, pointless, purposeless and ultimately useless life pleasure principle, writ large and in Portugese.