The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

BBC’s Big Read #94

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Have you ever tried to force yourself to like a book because it’s a personal favorite of someone you respect? For me, this is that book.

In high school, an admired history teacher loved this novel and recommended it to his classes. I believe he even gave us an extra credit assignment that involved reading it. I wanted to enjoy it so badly because my teenage brain foolishly equated disliking a recommendation from a valued source with outright rejection of the source itself. Alas, even this youthful fallacy wasn’t enough to manipulate me into liking The Alchemist.

Reading is a subjective experience, and I only know how to describe my disinclination toward this novel in subjective terms: In my opinion, The Alchemist tries extremely hard and epically fails at what The Little Prince accomplishes effortlessly. In The Little Prince, the simplicity feels genuine and endearing; in The Alchemist, it comes across as manufactured and farcical. It’s more akin to a redundant self-help book full of empty platitudes than a heartwarming story. I don’t know that Saint-Exupéry’s intentions in writing The Little Prince were any purer than Coelho’s in writing The Alchemist, but it certainly feels like Coelho was making a mockery of me as a reader. I got the impression he expected me to be such an oaf that I would acquiesce to whatever he was peddling.

At the end of the day, I don’t despise The Alchemist, but it does come across as gimmicky, and I can’t fathom how others seem to find it so praiseworthy and life-altering.

❧ Find here a review that sums it up far better than this one.

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𝓟.𝓢. This review was crossposted from Goodreads because it contains actual thoughts rather than a typically facetious single-sentence remark. View all my book ratings and pointless takes on Goodreads or The StoryGraph.