2015 Book Review #34: The Alchemist

[jethrien]

Title: The Alchemist
Author: Paulo Coelho
Genre: Self-help book disguised as a fable
Thingummies: 1

Synopsis: Shepherd takes a really stupid journey in pursuit of his Personal Legend.

Thoughts: This is what would happen if Tuesdays with Morrie and Who Moved My Cheese? had a love child. It tries to be The Little Prince. Instead, it hands us a bunch of mystical nonsense and tries to convince us that the universe will conspire to help us achieve our Personal Legend (seriously? it's capitalized, even in speech) and that if we fail to achieve our dreams, it's just because we didn't try hard enough. And that not pursuing unrealistic dreams will leave us bitter shells of ourselves, by the way.

It's pandering to the worst degree. If that's your thing, have fun. Me? I only finished it because I could hate-read it in two commutes.

Comments

[dushai.livejournal.com]

I'd like to register a dissenting opinion, in case I'm not the only person who uses your reviews as near-unimpeachable recommendations for my reading list... I found the book to be significantly better than you did -- certainly not 5 thingummies, but somewhere between 3 and 4. It can't be interpreted as being aimed at those of us in our 30s or 40s who are intelligent and introspective and have generally figured out what we're trying to do with ourselves and why or why not -- that would certainly be grounds for demoting the thingummy count to 1. But for a somewhat intimidated young person just finishing college, say, or someone who's done what their family expected of them their whole life, a fable like this can be a helpful kick in the pants: "What if you could assume that the Universe would start off actively trying to help you, modulo a few tests? What would that encourage you to do? What if you'd face huge challenges later on? How badly do you want it?" There is a time in one's life to be daring, to try things that might very well not work out, especially things that one has passion for. We (jethrien and dushai) are not at that point in our lives now, but many younger folks are, and some of those people need a little encouragement -- either encouragement to start thinking about what they would like their Personal Legend to be, or encouragement to keep going once they face setbacks. This book is for them.

Personally, I'd argue that the best way to read it is to allow yourself to get swept up in the unrealistic fable, then come down to earth and see to what extent you feel that your own story resonates with it. Maybe the answer is "Not much" -- fine, you've had a little fable to read, isn't that nice. But maybe you're feeling "Wow, what if it could play out like that with me and [insert your dream here]?" Then maybe you might want to start working on hard-headed realistic plans to try to make it happen. (The Alchemist is not a good guide to hard-headed realistic planning.) Maybe your planning will reveal that it's not practical: you don't want to invest the effort that would be required to make it happen, or it entails a greater degree of risk than you're personally comfortable with, or whatever. My personal advice would be to go with the hard-headed reasoning at that point. But that's a matter of personal taste.

[fyrna.livejournal.com]

I thought it was a mildly amusing fable, but agree about the heavy-handedness of it. It's not among my favorite books, though I've given it as a gift to one or two people.

My *major* gripe with it is that it's filed with the adult books, when it's really a children's book. And on the flip side, The Little Prince is filed as a children's book, when it's really an adult book. (This frustrates me greatly, because The Little Prince is one of my favorite books ever, but it made absolutely no sense at all to me when I was a kid.)