The Devil and Miss Prym - Paulo Coelho

This is why I write these little warbles. I'd forgotten I'd read this book. I was rummaging through a pile of paper pulled it out, and was all like, whoa, like I've, you know, read this?

Perhaps it read so fast is why I didn't remember it... a train ride and a half is all it lasted. Unfortunately, I had nothing else to read for the last half of the commute home, so I got to ruminate on whether or not Paulo Coelho is 'all that' or if he's just a panacea for shallow yuppies seeking a sense of profundity in their solipsistic little lives. I really am undecided.

Between The Alchemist and this little number, which together constitute the entirety of Coelho's oeuvres that I've read, I've got this funny feeling that he's pulling the wool over my eyes by covering off deep questions about humanity in remarkably readable (hour and a half!) books. See, in this one he's all over the "are humans good, or are they evil; and if evil, is it an irredeemable evil" question. And that's fine - worse, and more foolish, than Coelho have taken it on.

The thing is, the story trips along so merrily it feels like it's fluffy! And how can a fluffy book be so doggone focussed on Good n' Evil? Remember those whacky thought experiments where an dilemma is posed and your response suggests what kind of person (you think) you are? You know, lead a group of people one way and there's a 100% chance that half of them will die, go the other way and there's a 50% percent chance either way that all live or all die. Which do you do?

Well, it's a bit like ol' Paulo came up with a thought experiment, and turned it into a novel. Plausible? What the heck, it's a thought experiment. I reckon it could have gone either way with regard to the ending.

I enjoyed reading the book; I enjoyed the way Coelho really worked the tension within the main characters; I'm not sure about the proposition that fear is humankind's main motivator; I thought the whole light/dark parts of the soul were a bit trite and cliché - especially after the visualisation or personification of the Devil, which was cool.

And I can't shake the idea that the story's not as profound as it seems. That frustrates me.