Brida: A Novel (P.S.)
by Paulo Coelho
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Book Summary Information
Author: Paulo CoelhoEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-02-10
ISBN: 0061578959
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Brida: A Novel (P.S.)
Book Review: Boring, But Has Some Great Quotes
Summary: 3 Stars
This premise of this book sounded intriguing, but it turned out to be excruciatingly boring. I would have given it only one or two stars, but it was saved by some occasional gems of phrases.
It attempts to combine literary fiction about a young woman's travels in Ireland with Christian and Wiccan wisdom teachings, but doesn't succeed on any of these fronts. It's too abstract to be either interesting or consistently meaningful. And the part about very young woman seducing an old geezer is really squicky (for a female reader, anyway.)
Unless you are looking for some great quotes, I'd recommend giving this a skip and reading a good novel set in Ireland and/or a real book on Christianity or Wicca. Or read Veronika Decides To Die for a much better book by this author.
(247 pages)
Quotes from Brida:
" . . . down below, the lights in the village were beginning to come on. Soon, families would be gathering around the table to have supper. They worked hard and honestly. They feared God, and they tried to help their fellow man. They did all these things because they had known love. Their lives had a reason. They could understand everything that was going on in the Universe."
"There had been a time when nothing in the world was as important as herself. She'd had several boyfriends, and had always believed that she loved each one, only to see love vanish from one moment to the next. Of all the things she'd experienced until then, love had been the most difficult."
"Once again, she was putting her belief in love, trusting her feelings. But she'd been disappointed so often before that she was no longer sure of anything. Nevertheless, this was the great gamble of her life."
"People had been trying to understand the Universe through love since the beginning of time."
"'Perhaps solitude has made his madness worse,' Brida thought, and again she felt the first stirrings of panic. She may have been young, but she knew the harm that loneliness could do to people, especially as they got older. She had met people who had lost the glow of being alive, because they could no longer fight against loneliness, and had ended up becoming addicted to it. They were for the most part, people who believed the world to be an undignified, inglorious place, and who spent their evenings and nights talking on and on about the mistakes others had made. They were people whom solitude had made into the judges of the world, whose verdicts were scattered to the four winds for whoever cared to listen."
""But how will I know who my soulmate is?" . . .
'By taking risks,' she said to Brida. "By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in your search for love. As long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end.' "
"'Is it possible to meet more than one soulmate in each life?'
Yes, thought Wicca with a certain bitterness. And when that happens, the heart is divided, and the result is pain and suffering.
'Yes, we can meet three or four soulmates, because we are many and we are scattered. . . . The essence of creation is one, and one alone', she said, ' and that essence is called love. Love is the force that brings us back together, in order to condense the experience dispersed in many lives in many parts of the world. We are responsible for the whole earth, because we do not know where they might be, those soulmates we were from the beginning of time. If they are well, then we too will be happy. If they are not well, we will suffer, however unconsciously, a portion of their pain. Above all, though, we are responsible for re-encountering at least once in every incarnation, the soulmate who is sure to cross our path. Even if it is only for a matter of moments, because those moments bring with them a love so intense that it justifies the rest of our days . . . We can also allow our soulmate to pass us by, without accepting him or her or even noticing. Then we will need another incarnation in order to find that soulmate. And because of our selfishness, we will be condemned to the worst torture humankind ever invented for itself: loneliness."
"The solitude of forests is harder to bear than the solitude of towns." (I found this quote interesting because I completely disagree with it. I guess it depends on the person.)
Summary of Brida: A Novel (P.S.)
Brida, a young Irish girl, has long been interested in various aspects of magic but is searching for something more. Her search leads her to people of great wisdom. She meets a wise man who dwells in a forest, who teaches her to trust in the goodness of the world, and a woman who teaches her how to dance to the music of the world. As Brida seeks her destiny, she struggles to find a balance between her relationships and her desire to become a witch.
This enthralling novel incorporates themes that fans of Paulo Coelho will recognize and treasure. It is a tale of love, passion, mystery, and spirituality from the master storyteller.
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