Books : The Witch of Portobello (P.S.)

Rating: - Poorly written, load of mumbo-jumbo
As someone who has enjoyed Coehlo's other works, I had high hopes for this book. I read half-way through however, and by this point I was still waiting for the book to 'start'. It tells a story from different perspectives, a cliched tactic, but there was one problem: There was no story. There is a vague mumbo-jumbo tale of Sherine Khalil, but it seems to make little sense, and is of no excitement and importance.

It makes a cliched attack on religion, and shows a staggering level of ignorance about religion in the UK. For example, in the book a woman who names herself 'Athena' is 'persecuted' by the church in England (This is set in the 1990s) yet in reality any New Age dancing and chanting in this country is highly unlikely to receive anything beyond a raised eyebrow. You would certainly not have the power to have the police or the church close somewhere down.

The book was one of the worst I have ever read, and I feel Coehlo is now surely not writing for the love of it, but perhaps to pump out further income for his book empire. A massive disappointment for someone who has enjoyed so many of his books.

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Rating: - Go Paolo Go!!
Every time there is a new book from Paolo I don't want to buy it because I don't believe that he can write another amazing book. But I am always wrong :)

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Rating: - Witch captivates
Paulo Coelho of international fame for his book The Alchemist has here in The Witch of Portobello has woven a very unique and compelling tale. Part of what draws the reader in is the story itself and part is the very unique way it is written. Rather than a straight forward narrative, or a dialogue or even a series of letters this is a unique narrative technique. It is written as a series of first person accounts of individuals interactions with our unusual heroine Athena aka the Witch of Portobello.

These stories, taped interviews and letters have been compiled by a narrator we do not know until the end of the story. He has decided to let Athena's story be told as other's tell it, through their own words, and with all of their emotions, anger, support, respect or disgust. What we learn from these accounts is not only is Athena a bit of an enigma, from these accounts we could almost assume that almost every person encountered a different Athena, an Athena of the making in their own mind. The way the 'biography' is written it allows us to draw our own conclusions, rather than a traditionally researched biography that is colored by the lenses that cloud the vision of the biographer. Much as each of us look at the world through a series of lenses of our experiences, and cultural biases.

Athena is a young woman who tries to fill the spaces, the silences in her life. The more she tries to fill them the more dissatisfied she becomes. Until she learns that it is the silences between the notes that make the music so powerful. When she learns to embrace the silence, the spaces, she finds a power an energy. She becomes a spiritual leader, some see her as a saint and some see her as a sinner. She is both revered and feared. A saint and a demon. The compiled documents help us to see Athena for who she was.

So join our unknown biographer as we trace the life of a murdered young woman and journey around the world and into an unseen spiritual world. This book is better than some of Coelho's more recent offerings, and the narrative tool will draw you in and keep you turning the pages.

A warning though the book deals with earth religions and has some new age ceremonies in it, therefore it will not be for all readers.

(First Published in Imprint 2007-05-18 in the 'Book Review Column.)

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Rating: - Witch captivates
Paulo Coelho of international fame for his book The Alchemist has here in The Witch of Portobello has woven a very unique and compelling tale. Part of what draws the reader in is the story itself and part is the very unique way it is written. Rather than a straight forward narrative, or a dialogue or even a series of letters this is a unique narrative technique. It is written as a series of first person accounts of individuals interactions with our unusual heroine Athena aka the Witch of Portobello.

These stories, taped interviews and letters have been compiled by a narrator we do not know until the end of the story. He has decided to let Athena's story be told as other's tell it, through their own words, and with all of their emotions, anger, support, respect or disgust. What we learn from these accounts is not only is Athena a bit of an enigma, from these accounts we could almost assume that almost every person encountered a different Athena, an Athena of the making in their own mind. The way the 'biography' is written it allows us to draw our own conclusions, rather than a traditionally researched biography that is colored by the lenses that cloud the vision of the biographer. Much as each of us look at the world through a series of lenses of our experiences, and cultural biases.

Athena is a young woman who tries to fill the spaces, the silences in her life. The more she tries to fill them the more dissatisfied she becomes. Until she learns that it is the silences between the notes that make the music so powerful. When she learns to embrace the silence, the spaces, she finds a power an energy. She becomes a spiritual leader, some see her as a saint and some see her as a sinner. She is both revered and feared. A saint and a demon. The compiled documents help us to see Athena for who she was.

So join our unknown biographer as we trace the life of a murdered young woman and journey around the world and into an unseen spiritual world. This book is better than some of Coelho's more recent offerings, and the narrative tool will draw you in and keep you turning the pages.

A warning though the book deals with earth religions and has some new age ceremonies in it, therefore it will not be for all readers.

(First Published in Imprint 2007-05-18 in the 'Book Review Column.)

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Rating: - Too esoteric for my taste
This was a book group choice and not a book I would otherwise have read. It did make for some interesting discussion, but the other readers felt, as I did, that it wasn't a particularly enjoyable read.
The beginning of the book, as we meet the friends and relatives of Athena, is slow and disjointed. The remainder of the first half was a bit too esoteric and pseudo-spiritual. The book picked up in the second half but plummeted to a very unsatisfactory end.

Athena, the daughter of Romanian gypsies, is adopted from an orphanage and taken to live in Beirut and then England. As a teenager she starts to look for other meanings in life and continues this search into her University life and then into her job in a bank. She makes quite an impact at the bank, and moves with them to work in Dubai. From there, she branches into real estate sales - a profession that seems rather contradictory to her beliefs in life. When she has made enough for herself and her son to live without working for 3 yrs, she returns to London. Here she starts to become more involved in her search for 'Mother Earth'. She visits Romania to find her birth mother and from there things escalate to the final denouement.

This is a book for people with an interest in spiritual matters - dancing yourself into a trance and talking to the spirits. I would not recommend it myself. I will probably read 'The Alchemist' at some point and possibly 'Nineteen Minutes', but I shan't be searching out any other Paulo Coelho books.