By Julie anda Porter, Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers Ahead: The next book in January's Coelho-thon is much darker but at the same time it is a moving and lovely story about death and mental illness. It is for the most part equally as brilliant and well-written as Brida and The Alchemist. However, it is let down by an ending that contradicts not only the rest of the book but much of Coelho's other writings.
Veronika, a young Slovenian woman, is bored with a life of sameness and powerlessness. So one night she writes a note, swallows a handful of sleeping pills, and lies down to die. When she wakes up, she finds herself in the psychiatric hospital, Villete, with heart palpitations and a diagnosis that she has a few days, a week at most, to live.
Veronika is a wonderful character. She seems like a woman that most people think would have no problems. She is close to her parents, has many friends, an active love life, a good job as a librarian, and is very beautiful. Many outside would think she would have no reason to committ suicide.
But like Esther in The Bell Jar, Veronika proves that sometimes the seemingly most contented people could face those dark nights of pondering their mortality and feel nothing about the days ahead. While Veronika starts out very fragile, she gains strength and purpose during her time in Villete.
At first Veronika is reluctant to make connections with the staff and other patients since she has so little time left. However, despite her reservations, she begins to bond with the other patients. Slowly she befriends the other patients and joins the Fraternity, a group of patients that meet and share stories and understanding becoming a surrogate family.
Veronika bonds with patients like Mari, who heads the Fraternity and draws Veronika into their group. Another memorable patient is Zedka, an older woman who suffered from a broken love affair and generations of mental illness to become a guide to Veronika. Zedka tells the younger woman stories such as that of a kingdom whose citizens, including the king and queen, drank from a well that produced madness to show that madness can sometimes be a relative term. Sometimes to those who are mentally ill, they are sane and the rest of the world is mad.
Through her new alliances, Veronika opens herself to new possibilities and reignites her talent in playing the piano. Veronika's playing interests Eduard, a patient diagnosed as schizophrenic but actually institutionalized by his family when they disagreed with his intellectual and artistic pursuits. Coelho no doubt related to Eduard's character, because according to his biography, Coelho's father had him institutionalized when he took Coelho's literary ambitions and non-conformist nature as signs of mental illness. This information plus a strange metafictional almost unnecessary conversation between Coelho himself and Villete's owner's daughter also named Veronika, makes this a very personal book for Coelho.
Which makes the ending even more disappointing. While Veronika gets into a beautiful relationship with Eduard, takes her interest in music seriously, and learns to embrace life, it is at the cost of honesty. I won't give away the ending except the decision by the Villete head, Dr. Igor is extremely manipulative and almost offensive. While Coelho's other books state that the "Universe conspires to help you get what you want", Dr. Igor almost strangles that notion by engaging in reckless treatments towards Veronika and never tells her of them. Coelho also does the Reader a disservice by not following up with that resolution leaving it dangling and Veronika's fate uncertain. What should be a book in which the Reader could have sighed with relief at the second chance that Veronika had been given and hope for a better future for her, this Reader wants to throw the book in frustration at the betrayal Veronika received from her doctor. And her author.
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