Paulo Coelho’s novel, Veronika Decides to Die, is a profound exploration of what it means to be “different” in a society that honors what is expected and fears the power of individual passions.
Veronika attempts suicide not out of some great depression, but more due to a lack of interest in continuing on in her dull routine. But the attempt fails and she wakes up in a mental hospital, under the care of a doctor with controversial ideas in the treatment of mental illness.
Veronika Decides to Die is actually based on Coelho’s own experiences in a mental hospital, and questions why some people are labeled sane or insane. What is normal? Why do some societies honor risk-takers while other cultures stifle free-thinkers?
Despite the heavy theme of this novel and the questions it poses, Coelho’s gorgeous prose establishes a dream-like mood that floats the reader along. For example, this passage describing Veronika’s first heart attack:
She stumbled, fell, felt a sharp blow on her face, continued making heroic efforts to breathe, but the air wouldn’t go in. Worst of all, death did not come. She was entirely conscious of what was gong on around her, she could still see colors and shapes, although she had difficulty hearing what others were saying; the cries and exclamations seemed distant, as if coming from another world. Apart from this, everything else was real; the air wouldn’t enter her lungs, it would simply not obey the commands of her lungs and her muscles, and still she did not lose consciousness.
Even the “shocking” scenes are rendered in details that focus on how beautiful it is to be human, to have these desires that we need not fear fulfilling.
Coelho could have ended his novel with a cliché answer to the simple question: How would you live your life if you thought you would die tomorrow? But thankfully he leaves in enough ambiguity for readers to realize there are no easy answers.
210 pp.
