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3.5 AVERAGE
3.5 AVERAGE
I loved this. I don't know what I agree with and what I don't but it made me think and that's all I can ask for.
Paulo Coelho’s third person narrative of hippie adventures in the time of hippie-ing. It covers his real experiences as well as those of people he crossed paths with. The narration felt very detached from the characters, despite what should have been an intimate account of Coelho’s wanderings around the world in the spirit of self and human discovery at a time when it was truly a global movement. It’s structured oddly, allowing the two main characters, Paulo the Brazilian and Karla the Dutch lady, to converge but in an inharmonious and anti-climatic manner. They’re awkward and so is the book, as if it were a tapestry woven from threads made of different materials that don’t stick together well. Part of me wonders if he wrote this simply to find Karla, his companion and lover for a part of his journey, so he could reconnect with her and see what she’d been up to all the decades gone by. Whatever his motive, I never managed to get a feel for the actual story he was trying to tell, and I wasn’t able to feel much of anything for the characters either.
This is an interesting take on an interesting era. It's the 1960s-1970s and all over the world people are questioning social structures and getting experimental with everything from drugs to free love to world travel for the purpose of spiritual awakening. So many documentaries have been made about the era, usually focusing on London or New York or San Francisco. This one is written from the perspective of someone from Brazil.
He makes the pilgrimage to Machu Pichu and discovers that the high altitude can be dealt with by chewing Coca leaves, gets arrested as a terrorist because his girlfriend is from a Communist block country and goes through many other adventures that are generated by the times and social movements.
I found it fascinating to see his travels through the eyes of someone who wasn't either American or English. His time in Amsterdam made me smile as my own visits to the city, decades later, were very similar.
The writing was wonderful and had a certain dreamy quality that seems to come with writers from South America. This was a trip of nostalgia for a time and place I've never been and was a very enjoyable read.
He makes the pilgrimage to Machu Pichu and discovers that the high altitude can be dealt with by chewing Coca leaves, gets arrested as a terrorist because his girlfriend is from a Communist block country and goes through many other adventures that are generated by the times and social movements.
I found it fascinating to see his travels through the eyes of someone who wasn't either American or English. His time in Amsterdam made me smile as my own visits to the city, decades later, were very similar.
The writing was wonderful and had a certain dreamy quality that seems to come with writers from South America. This was a trip of nostalgia for a time and place I've never been and was a very enjoyable read.
