Veronika Decides to Die
I finally read Veronika Decides to Die, hoping, at last, to achieve full crazy-girl status.
I wasn't terribly impressed in that the book is an immensely direct and at times tedious allegory.
Maybe if I'd read it when I was younger?
It's more interesting viewed through the lens of social justice and/or liberation, I think.
But perhaps this is just another example of a bias I'm beginning to recognize more consistently: if the goal is to teach the audience something, then I don't think said audience should be aware of the lesson until the end, or certainly closer to it than the first 25 pages. It should be this unfolding, this a-ha moment, where everything clicks. I think the reader should have to make his/her own meaning in order for the lesson to be learned, and this book felt rather obvious and spoon-fed. At any rate. . .
"I'll tell everyone that the children are my reason for living, when in reality my life is their reason for living." (p.23)
"It was odd that no one had ever described Vitriol as a mortal poison, although most of the people affect could identify its taste, and they referred to the process of poisoning as bitterness. To a greater or lesser degree, everyone had some bitterness in their organism, just as we are all carriers of the tuberculosis bacillus. But these two illness only attack when a patient is debilitated; in the case of bitterness, the right conditions for the disease occur when the person becomes afraid of so-called reality." (p.90)
"Don't confuse insanity with a loss of control." (p.101)
Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die
I wasn't terribly impressed in that the book is an immensely direct and at times tedious allegory.
Maybe if I'd read it when I was younger?
It's more interesting viewed through the lens of social justice and/or liberation, I think.
But perhaps this is just another example of a bias I'm beginning to recognize more consistently: if the goal is to teach the audience something, then I don't think said audience should be aware of the lesson until the end, or certainly closer to it than the first 25 pages. It should be this unfolding, this a-ha moment, where everything clicks. I think the reader should have to make his/her own meaning in order for the lesson to be learned, and this book felt rather obvious and spoon-fed. At any rate. . .
"I'll tell everyone that the children are my reason for living, when in reality my life is their reason for living." (p.23)
"It was odd that no one had ever described Vitriol as a mortal poison, although most of the people affect could identify its taste, and they referred to the process of poisoning as bitterness. To a greater or lesser degree, everyone had some bitterness in their organism, just as we are all carriers of the tuberculosis bacillus. But these two illness only attack when a patient is debilitated; in the case of bitterness, the right conditions for the disease occur when the person becomes afraid of so-called reality." (p.90)
"Don't confuse insanity with a loss of control." (p.101)
Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die
posted by clutterofechoes at 6:37 PM
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