欧宝娱乐

Coelho's Alchemist is one of my favorite books. I've read it twice, and both times its simple story and straightforward Universal Truths have stirred me. Brida tells a similar story about a youth who feels herself tugged onto a unique path toward greatness. But lightning has not struck twice.

This is a book of only 200 pages, yet it took me almost a month to read, and not only because I was grading hundreds of research papers at the same time. It discusses a 21-year-old Irish girl (Brida) who is strangely drawn to a local forest-living Magus who describes his profession as Teacher of the Tradition of the Sun, whatever that is. Brida goes to him for "lessons," and he leaves her alone on a rock in the middle of the forest. This annoys her, so she finds herself a different teacher, this one a middle-aged woman named Wicca, who is a Teacher of the Tradition of the Moon, whatever that is, and through a variety of mystic gizmos and hallucinations, she informs Brida that she is a witch. Brida has been a witch in all her previous lives, will be a witch again in future lives. Being a witch is her Gift.

Now, for some reason, I've read several books about witches this year, but Brida is certainly the first in which the witches are devout God-loving Christians. I mean, the witches do typical Pagan witch things -- they bemoan their ancestors who were burned at stakes, they dance naked around bonfires in the forest, etc. -- but they also talk incessantly about God and His plan for witches, who are His Gardeners of the Universe. This intrigued me for a while, but I decided I was ready to move onto another book about the time Wicca informs Brida that the only way to truly connect with God was to have an intense orgasm. This Brida accomplishes twice, with two different Soul Mates, and both times in the public outdoors. Oh brother.

Perhaps you've noticed how many times I've capitalized non-proper nouns in this review. Perhaps you've been distracted by the same. If so, Brida certainly isn't a book for you. In every paragraph Coelho introduces some kind of Universal Truth (that phrase itself is capitalized in the novel) that we as readers are apparently intended to take to heart. Some of these are legitimate life lessons (everyone has a Gift, but only a lucky few seem able to discover and utilize it), while others are silly (God allowed Adam and Eve to fall from Grace because He needed the "Universe" to be set in motion). He does the same in The Alchemist, but the strength of that book is its focus. Here, there were so many Truths that I was at first overwhelmed, later confused, and ultimately so annoyed that I found myself skipping over them.