Veronika Decides To Die

What happens when you try to kill yourself, but wake up to find that you've failed the attempt? What's worse, you have a newfound passion for life, but your body has been harmed irreparably and you have only 1 week to live? With this grim premise, author Paulo Coelho takes readers on a provocative journey of self-discovery that debunks some common presumptions of living and dying.

<< The author in his youth.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------  By Tanny Chia

>> Coelho as a baby.

[eastciti.com, November 3]
"Coelho writes about madness with a compassion that steers clear of cliché. His style confides rather than preaches, and the effect is one of pensive eavesdropping on the most tender

of confessions." Arena - Magazine for Men, U.K.

Paulo Coelho belongs to that most powerful category of writers - those who speak straight from the deepest recesses of their hearts. The Alchemist, Coelho's first worldwide bestseller which firmly established him as a spiritual writer for our times, spoke of the need to go after one's dreams and touched many hearts. Personally speaking though, that was mere butterfly's touch compared to the poignancy and intensity of soul poured into Coelho's latest book.

For one, Veronika is almost autobiographical at one point when the author referred to his own youthful 'madness' when he was interned at an asylum by his parents for his oddity: "half-shy, half-extrovert and by his desire to be an artist" - a supposed 'oddity' that I, and no doubt several strange others deeply identify with. For another, the book challenges the very definition of madness, the tendency of society to stigmatise behaviour variant from prevailing societal norms. This, I suspect, will strongly inspire the deviant souls in often stiflingly homogeneous Singapore to stick to their unordinary guns.

Veronika is a disturbingly familiar character. Young, pretty and with infinite potential, she nonetheless feels that she has nothing in life to look forward to. She will merely get married when she gets old enough, start a family, and face old age stuck in a monotonous dead-end job and a marriage which flame has died long ago. Faced with such a bleak future, she decides one winter's morning to do herself a favour - she attempts suicide. Only, she survives and wakes up in an asylum to learn more about life from its insane inmates than she has ever learnt from the inhabitants of the sane world.

From Zedka, who has a loving husband and children, and a beautiful house, Veronika learns that the thin line separating the mad from the sane is just a matter of mere figures - the majority decides that the minority behaves and thinks differently, and thus must be mad. (By this definition, all the world's pioneers, past or present, must similarly belong to the realm of the mad.) From Mari, a former attorney, she finds enough courage and self-liberation to cast aside all her learnt inhibitions - "after all, we are the mad and are allowed to do this" - and experiences her first sexual awakening. From Eduard, a diplomat's son who paid the price for following his unusual dream, she understands the courage needed to go against conventions and expectations.

With renewed passion for living and fervent urgency, Veronika bravely sets out to live her last days to the fullest in a poignant attempt to recompense for her earlier days as a living dead. The lessons from Veronika to willing learners is clear - you can be alive and yet very dead; every single day is a choice we make between living and dying.

Title: Veronika Decides to Die
Price: $16.38.
Available at Borders Bookstore,
Wheelock Place.

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Paulo Coelho's official website
>> http://www.paulocoelho.com.br/engl/index.html

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