Note: Citations are based on reference standards. However, formatting rules can vary widely between applications and fields of interest or study. The specific requirements or preferences of your reviewing publisher, classroom teacher, institution or organization should be applied.
The E-mail Address es field is required. Please enter recipient e-mail address es. The E-mail Address es you entered is are not in a valid format. Please re-enter recipient e-mail address es. You may send this item to up to five recipients. The name field is required. Please enter your name. The E-mail message field is required. Please enter the message. Please verify that you are not a robot.
Would you also like to submit a review for this item? You already recently rated this item. Your rating has been recorded.
Write a review Rate this item: 1 2 3 4 5. Preview this item Preview this item. Costa's translation is competent, but cannot save Coelho's novel from its by now familiar and conventionally inspirational tone and message"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private. Save Cancel. Find a copy in the library Finding libraries that hold this item Sub Total:.
View Cart. Book of the Month. Cooking New Releases. James Bond. Primary Secondary Tertiary. Dymocks Tutoring. Dymocks Book of the Year Shortlist. Our Favourite Kids Books this Christmas. Fiction Non-Fiction. Early Learning.
Kids' Christmas Gift Guide. Gift Ideas Bookish Eco. Australiana Inspiration. Christmas Gift Guide. Christmas For Kids For Her. Our Favourite Books this Christmas. Novelty Partyware. Rifle Paper Co. Studio Milligram. The School of Life. The Wiggles Shop. Grid Dot Grid. Daily Weekly. Monthly Calendars. Desk Planner. Ballpoint Pen Rollerball Pen. Stationery Sets. Sketchbooks Marker Pens. Lamy Studio Milligram Moleskine.
MiGoals Delfonics. Rhodia Faber-Castell Decomposition. Clairefontaine Kaweco. Board Games Classic Trivia. Dice Strategy. Games Universe. Playing Cards Strategy. Animal Nature Bookish Around the world. Monopoly Ridley's Games. Top Trumps Trivial Pursuit. Mensa 4M. Chapter One. Literary Events Club. Store Events. Booklover Benefits. Booklover FAQ.
Contact Booklover. Find a Store Franchising. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Margaret Jull Costa Translator. In his latest international bestseller, the celebrated author of The Alchemist addresses the fundamental questions asked by millions: What am I doing here today? Yet something is lacki In his latest international bestseller, the celebrated author of The Alchemist addresses the fundamental questions asked by millions: What am I doing here today?
Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. Published June 1st by Harper Perennial first published More Details Original Title. On the Seventh Day 2. Ljubljana , Slovenia. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Veronika Decides to Die , please sign up. Ananya off course it's an eye opener. This question contains spoilers See all 21 questions about Veronika Decides to Die…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews.
Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Veronika Decides to Die. Sep 28, Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it did not like it. Pretty, single, year-old Veronika decides to die for two reasons, both of them phony: one, because she realizes she will one day be old; and two, because a lot of things are wrong in this world.
She then takes a lot of sleeping pills. While waiting to die, as if she's waiting for her cat to finish drinking its milk, Veronika decides to read a magazine and then write to the editor of that magazine.
Which made the scene cartoonish. This rare combination of phoniness and cartoonishness gelled and Pretty, single, year-old Veronika decides to die for two reasons, both of them phony: one, because she realizes she will one day be old; and two, because a lot of things are wrong in this world. This rare combination of phoniness and cartoonishness gelled and gave birth to this masterpiece.
A masterpiece of nothingness, like a gigantic void proud of its vast emptiness. Paolo Coelho is like a god, not only to those who worship him, for he has created something out of nothing using the time-tested way of hoodwinking morons who read books like this: sprinkling lots of amphibologies and gobbledygooks to a plotless tale of nonsense.
Gripping their highlighters, these morons would then make passages like this shine in neon, marvel at how deep they are, and then give the book a 5-star rating at goodreads. But if you look up at the starry sky, you'll see that all the different worlds up there combine to form constellations, solar systems, galaxies.
He could have added: If you feel all alone in this big, wide world as if you carry the weight of all the sadness there is, then look up at the starry, starry sky during a starry, starry night and realize that there are aliens living in all those other planets who, in their solitude, likewise pine for the worlds they cannot see.
Damn, I sure do sound better than Coelho! View all comments. Feb 24, Federico DN rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. Madness is wanting to be normal. There is something very wrong with the world. Veronika wants to die. And she can certainly try, but she can also, certainly, fail. Committed to an insane asylum, she may actually find sanity in the craziest places of all. Unfortunately, I cannot really go into much detail without spoiling much of the book's content, so I'm just going to say that those few who decide to read it may find in it a beautiful profoundly moving story, about life, and death.
Veronika is o Madness is wanting to be normal. Veronika is one of those characters that, despite all circumstances, you cannot but find her tragically adorable. This is one of those 'love it or hate it' books, so you are probably going to love it plainly, or hate it deeply. You can tell which side the coin toss landed for me. Still remaining, the movie Until next time, Locura es querer ser normal. Hay algo muy mal en el mundo. Veronika quiere morir.
View all 24 comments. Dec 27, Irina rated it it was amazing. Fantastic read! I could not put the book down! So Veronika said the same thing and decided to do something about it. Nothing bad had happened to Veronika, she was beautiful, had a regular life…very ordinary though The pills ruined her heart and she had one more week to live before she dies — or so she was told. In addition, her suicide touched lives of other people in the mental hospital, who started cherish every day of their lives.
They were hiding inside the walls of Vilette because they were trying to escape the real world due to similar reasons related to to not being understood by their families and society. And that at the end the true happiness lies in our own desire and believe, in our own acceptance and willingness to remove any boundaries and allow ourselves to live to the fullest, and be happy!
View all 8 comments. It tells the story of year-old Slovenian Veronika, who appears to have everything in life going for her, but who decides to kill herself. While she waits to die, she cancels the suicide letter she starts to her parents while suddenly provoked by a magazine article.
The magazine article wittily asks "Where is Slovenia? Her plan fails and she wakes up from the coma in Villette, a mental hospital in Slovenia, where she is told she has only a few days to live due to heart condition caused by the overdose.
Her presence there affects all of the mental hospital's patients, especially Zedka, who has clinical depression; Mari, who has panic attacks; and Eduard, who has schizophrenia, and with whom Veronika falls in love. During her internment in Villette she realizes that she has nothing to lose and can, therefore, do what she wants, say what she wants and be who she wants without having to worry about what others think of her; as a mental patient, she is unlikely to be criticized.
Because of this new-found freedom, Veronika experiences all the things she never allowed herself to experience, including hatred and love. View all 4 comments. Aug 06, Gloria Mundi rated it did not like it Shelves: snoozefest , books , insane-in-the-membrane , back-from-the-dead , wtf , curiouser-and-curiouser. Veronika is a 24 year old Slovenian woman who one day decides to kill herself, apparently because 1 "everything in her life was the same and, once her youth was gone, it would be downhill all the way" and 2 everything is wrong with the world and she feels powerless to make things right.
After she takes an overdose of sleeping pills, Veronika wakes up in a mental asylum and the remainder of the book is, basically, a series of interactions between Veronika and a number of the inhabitants of th Veronika is a 24 year old Slovenian woman who one day decides to kill herself, apparently because 1 "everything in her life was the same and, once her youth was gone, it would be downhill all the way" and 2 everything is wrong with the world and she feels powerless to make things right.
After she takes an overdose of sleeping pills, Veronika wakes up in a mental asylum and the remainder of the book is, basically, a series of interactions between Veronika and a number of the inhabitants of the asylum, including a young schizophrenic named Eduard, who mainly stands around mutely and masturbates while Veronika plays the piano. Veronika what else! I suppose, that tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Veronika, and certainly Coelho does not add much else in terms of characterisation.
Some reviewers have pointed out that to create realistic characters or believable plot is not the point of this book and certainly not Coelho's intention. Paulo Coelho himself makes a brief and pointless appearance at the beginning of the book to tell you that it is based on his own experiences as a mental patient and proceeds to bash you over the head with his message, which is that everyone is crazy, insanity and genius are two sides of the same coin and we should all let our inner freak out and stop trying to conform.
As a reader, I find this approach supremely unsatisfactory. For some reason, I tend to be much more receptive to the message when I can actually bring myself to care about the story or the characters, however unsympathetic they may be.
I am sometimes able to forgive lack of plot or character development if the book is particularly informative or beautifully written or manages to turn me on or makes me think about a subject in a new and interesting way. Unfortunately, this book did none of that. Veronika fails even as a placeholder because her actions are so absurd and incomprehensible that I was completely unable to relate to them or to put myself in her shoes.
So all that was left was the message and I had absolutely no patience for Coelho's particular brand of preachy self-help pop-psychology.
View all 17 comments. Feb 25, juicy brained intellectual rated it did not like it Shelves: do-not-own , ebooks. Now he was writing a thesis on the subject, which he would submit to the Slovenian Academy of Sciences for its scrutiny. It was the most important step in this shitty, whiny book in a nutshell, which is all it deserves: a simple, trite, self-indulgent allegory that poorly contemplates the similarities between genius and insanity i think this is the worst passage i've read so far: Vitriol was a toxic substance whose symptoms he had identified in his conversations with the men and women he had met.
It was the most important step in the field of insanity since Dr. Pinel had ordered that patients should be unshackled, astonishing the medical world with the idea that some of them might even be cured. As with the libido—the chemical reaction responsible for sexual desire, which Dr. Freud had identified, but which no laboratory had ever managed to isolate—Vitriol was released by the human organism whenever a person found him- or herself in a frightening situation, although it had yet to be picked up in any spectrographic tests.
It was easily recognized, though, by its taste, which was neither sweet nor savory—a bitter taste. Igor, the as-yet-unrecognized discoverer of this fatal substance, had given it the name of a poison much favored in the past by emperors, kings, and lovers of all kinds whenever they needed to rid themselves of some obstructive person.
Oct 07, Lisa rated it did not like it Shelves: books-to-read-before-you-die. I had to try another one to make sure the incompatibility of Coelho's thinking and mine was truly authentic and irreparable. I chose 11 minutes and it took me no longer to know we had to part.
Guess my shock when I found this book on the top of a shelf and was about to throw it away and skimmed through it and realised I recognised enough of its content to know the horrible truth: I have read three Coelho books!
Imagine the other books that I did NOT spend that reading time with, that may now remain unread because I spent valuable minutes and oh horror!
I am a teacher and I am good at explaining the importance of focus, priority and choice to my students. If you choose to spend time on this, something else won't happen. Think first, act wisely, use your time to add value to your life! I am quite a Veronika, come to think of it. I have it all and then I end up reading Paulo Coelho. Veronika is so privileged and lucky, she decides it is time to commit suicide thus we are introduced to a meaningful plot in the first sentence. The second paragraph drifts off on a riff about Veronika having met the Brazilian author Paulo Coelho and how she starts being interested in Computer Science because of this, reading a magazine and digging deeper into it while she prepares for her suicide.
Because that's what we do while we plan to kill our fictional selves? We get interested in our "creators", who invade not only the novel, but also the mind of the suicidal yet unfocused protagonist And of course our creator has some meaningful reflections to quote from the fictional magazine while the pills dissolve in Veronika's stomach as we are kindly informed, but that's not the reason for her passive interest in computer science - she is passive by nature, hence the unmotivated suicide!?
That's the question I would raise while randomly reading a science magazine, waiting to die. And then Enough said.
I recant my reading of three Coelhos. Is there any redemption or will the entire universe conspire to punish me for my lack of taste? What's the verdict? View all 50 comments. Apr 09, Misha rated it it was amazing Shelves: novel , loved-it , At about 50 pages in, it's a little frightening how much I've identified with Veronika thus far, how much I understand her rationale for wanting to die. She can only see one path unfolding for herself, and it's one she can't stomach.
I get that. But unlike Veronika I haven't given up hope that my path may yet fork off in unexpected and exciting directions. I also read and think there must be a certain kind of comfort in going truly insane.
Not this garden-variety neurosis I experience, but really At about 50 pages in, it's a little frightening how much I've identified with Veronika thus far, how much I understand her rationale for wanting to die. Not this garden-variety neurosis I experience, but really, disconnected-from-reality insane. We're so frightened of the idea of insanity, of not knowing what's going on around us or not being able to distinguish truth from fantasy, but what would it be like to live it?
There's a part of me that thinks maybe it would be just a little liberating, and I can understand why the Fraternity? It's drizzling rain and the sky outside is a deep, melancholy gray. I've got pillows stacked up on the couch, the cat languorously swishing his tail as he gazes out the window, and a cup of chocolate truffle coffee on the little rolling cart we use for a coffee table. Angelo Badalementi's haunting soundtrack music from Twin Peaks pours from the tinny speakers on my laptop.
It's kind of a perfect day. I just came across this passage. The doctors said that a recently discovered substance, serotonin, was one of the compounds responsible for how human beings felt.
A lack of serotonin impaired one's capacity to concentrate at work, to sleep, to eat, and to enjoy life's pleasures. When this substance was completely absent, the person experienced despair, pessimism, a sense of futility, terrible tiredness, anxiety, difficulties in making decisions, and would end up sinking into a permanent gloom, which would lead either to complete apathy or suicide.
In Zedka's case, however, the reasons were simpler than anyone suspected: there was a man hidden in her past, or rather, the fantasy she had built up about a man she had known a long time ago. Oh, Zedka, I suspect many of us can trace the roots of depression to the fantasy of a man or woman hidden in our pasts. I'm now eager to read on and discover Zedka's story. The impossible love. The refusal to believe the impossible love is impossible.
Hope itself can be a sort of madness sometimes, when it's false, when we allow it to consume us rather than uplift. I know this. Now back to Veronika, and, holy shit, I could just as well be reading my own journal. She had overcome her minor defects only to be defeated by matters of fundamental importance. She had managed to appear utterly independent when she was, in fact, desperately in need of company. She gave all her friends the impression that she was a woman to be envied, and she expended most of her energy in trying to behave in accordance with the image she had created of herself.
Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything.
She might have impressed a lot of people with her strength and determination, but where had it left her? In the void. Utterly alone. I suspect Veronika soon will learn she's not quite as alone as she thinks.
God, I hope so. I think I have to stop reproducing passages from this book or I'll end up quoting the whole damn thing. The psychiatrist? Quite possibly the craziest character in the book. He's laughably absurd. I loved the interchange between him and Veronika's mother -- the jumping back and forth between points-of-view and the mother's puzzlement at the things Igor was saying.
0コメント