I am reading a book by Paulo Coelho, “The Winner Stands Alone” and I have to confess that I am not enjoying it much.
He seems to jump from one thought to the next, killing the flow of the story in the process. At first I had the feeling that it was probably a translation issue, but now that I am almost half-way through the book, it simply feels like if it was written by a first-time author.
But there is one part that -although it seems like a “patch” on the plot- I really liked. It’s actually two paragraphs that I read over and over again and decided that they have more meaning than the 150 pages of the book I’ve read so far. I liked them so much that I felt compelled to close the book and write this post straight away.
One of the main characters is an Arab, Hamid, who at a time of reflection about his past and future recalls the Arabic proverb “Blessed be that which gives your children wings and roots.”
And the next two paragraphs go like this:
He needed his roots. There is a place in the world where we are born, where we learn our mother tongue and discover how our ancestors overcame the problems they had to face. There always comes a point when we feel responsible for that place.
He needed his wings too. They reveal to us the endless horizons of the imagination, they carry us to our dreams and to distant places. It is our wings that allow us to know the roots of our fellow men and to learn from them.
And by reading this my muse finally decided to come back!
So, I guess I should thank Paulo Coelho for writing those two paragraphs. They are precious … even if the rest of his book is truly appalling.
#1 by Joana M. on March 8, 2010 - 9:14 am
Hey there
I cannot believe that the element of the novel which you utterly hate I find the most enjoyable – the interchangeable narrative perspectives. In this way, Coelho exposes one situation, an eventful (and not so) morning in Cannes, from every possible angle by also providing the background information of what led to the happenings there and the personal thoughts of the person in whose mind the author is temporarily “settled”. I find this approach to story telling a lot more fulfilling as it allows me to have a full grasp of the novel and to be more or less on the same level of understanding as the characters in it. I’d also like to mention that this is the first book by Paulo Coelho that I pick up and so far (I myself have only read through half of it), I’ve enjoyed every word of it because there are a lot of underlying messages that he has felt the need to convey to his readers. The arabic proverb was actually what made me incidentally stumble upon your blog – it was one of the few hits Google threw at me. Happy reading!