So, you could read my spoilery review of this book or you can follow this link to this video of Bill Nye on Inside Amy Schumer and pretend that I am Bill Nye and the book is all of the women in this video.
Bill Nye on Inside Amy Schumer
When I requested this from the library, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I’ve read other Coehlo books before. I know what his writing is like. I expected that something would happen and that it would lead to some kind of inevitable communion with the infinite, the one, God. I wasn’t wrong.
What I did not expect was to so thoroughly loath the main character. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. I’m not married so I certainly haven’t been married for ten years. I don’t have children. Her life is just different from mine, I kept telling myself. Don’t be a hater!
I’m totally a hater.
And, I’m a hater because the main character dismissed people’s attempts to help her. I’m a hater because she assumed that all treatments for depression are just pills and you’re fine. I’m a hater because the main character didn’t talk to her husband about her feelings until way past the point that she should have and then failed to connect with him. I’m a hater because when she sought therapy (finally) she was unhappy that it would take six months for her to make progress that she dismissed them all and looked for a quicker cure (that wasn’t a cure-all pill. Which no one offered her, by the way). And, when this Swiss woman finds her “quicker cure” in the words of a Cuban shaman (who tells her to go ahead and have the affair), it still takes her at least six months to have her effing epiphany.
I get there are many paths to God and I get that lots of people are different and I get that sometimes you just got to get something out of your system. But, this book was terrible and the main character is a horrible person. I don’t often finish books that I don’t enjoy but I did finish this one. And now that I have, you don’t have to. You’re welcome.
Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do not read this book.
