{"id":1119,"date":"2015-07-26T09:39:49","date_gmt":"2015-07-26T07:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/?p=1119"},"modified":"2025-09-07T00:04:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T22:04:13","slug":"untreue-paulo-coelho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/2015\/07\/adultery-paulo-coelho\/","title":{"rendered":"Adultery \u2022 Paulo Coelho"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

I have already read The Alchemist<\/em> by Paulo Coelho and found the book quite entertaining and rather fairy-tale-like. So I was all the more curious about a story by him set in the here and now. The protagonist is 31-year-old Linda, who lives in Geneva, is well-off, happily married, has a good job as a journalist, and for whom everything seems to be going perfectly. Nevertheless, she is dissatisfied and depressed. The reason for this only becomes clear toward the end of the book. Until then, she constantly contradicts herself, is fully aware of her happiness, and yet searches for something. What exactly, no one knows \u2014 not even Coelho himself \u2014 because the story lacks any kind of structure and meaningful content. Adultery<\/em> is a book that repeatedly made me wonder why it was even written.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Various scenes are described in which Linda tries to get her \u201cproblems\u201d under control. Of course, that\u2019s difficult \u2014 because there aren\u2019t any. A midlife crisis, an existential crisis, the search for religion, the search for the meaning of life, the longing for professional success, the desire for true love, a journey of self-discovery, chemical imbalances in the brain, or depression \u2014 the author rules all of these out for his heroine, offering arguments as to why none of them apply. As a reader, you begin to wonder what exactly you\u2019re reading here. A little later it turns out that Linda is simply bored in her \u201cgolden cage\u201d and wants to go wild sexually for once. Coelho then calls this passion.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The portrayal of Linda is full of clich\u00e9s. She is presented as the prototype of a woman and mother according to the standards of Western capitalist society, and comes across as both unrealistic and artificial. Geneva is depicted just as stereotypically, populated only by soulless people drifting through wealth without meaning or heart \u2014 all fundamentally unhappy and, of course, expected to follow Coelho\u2019s strongly theistic, simplistic, and clich\u00e9-ridden worldview. He indulges in reflections meant to sound like refined bon mots but which are nothing more than barroom platitudes, as shallow as they come. You can spot these passages easily, since he switches to the abstract \u201cwe,\u201d intended to generalize \u2014 similar to politicians\u2019 use of \u201cone\u201d \u2014 pretending to make universally valid statements of timeless truth. I soon found these unbearable and skimmed through them quickly after about page one hundred. The following example illustrates such a passage:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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We want our partner to remain exactly the same person who stood with us before the altar and with whom we exchanged rings. As if we could stop time. But we can\u2019t. Nor should we want to. (p. 310)<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I don\u2019t know anyone to whom these statements that Coelho attributes to people actually apply \u2014 least of all myself. The last sentence perfectly captures his preachy tone, which would only be justified if the author actually argued, provided background, and could reason sensibly. But there\u2019s nothing of the sort to be found here. This generalization using \u201cwe\u201d is something I find very problematic. Who is \u201cwe\u201d? The Swiss, since he writes from Linda\u2019s perspective? Women, because Linda is a woman? All people? Is it therefore an established fact that everyone wants their partner to remain unchanged? A bold claim indeed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This book is also a declaration of bankruptcy for any form of narrative structure. Coelho has his protagonist do something, and then follows it with pages of commentary and interpretation of her thoughts, stuffed with his Christian-tinged pseudo-intellectual explanations. What annoys me most is that Coelho tries to appear intelligent, wraps himself in an intellectual guise, takes the liberty of constantly lecturing the reader and explaining the world \u2014 only to deliver banalities and empty clich\u00e9s in the end. These are cobbled together without substance, seemingly Google-researched and lazily glued to a so-called story that isn\u2019t even one. The reader is strung along with false, banal, and dimwitted thoughts that anyone could come up with after a couple of pints of strong beer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The dialogues are often a joke. Someone frequently talks to Linda, but her reactions and responses are merely summarized in indirect speech. As a result, exchanges that could have been interesting degenerate into one-sided expressions of emotion. Usually, such a scene ends with Linda wandering confusedly through the city while Coelho speaks directly to the reader in his teacherly tone, explaining the world as only he sees it \u2014 in which I couldn\u2019t recognize myself at all. Many sections consist of interviews or characters explaining something. To me, this shows that The Alchemist<\/em> was a lucky hit. The art of a novelist lies in leading their characters through the plot in such a way that meaning emerges abstractly and organically from the sum of scenes, actions, and dialogues \u2014 not by preaching and explaining like in a non-fiction book.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The characters seem artificial; Linda\u2019s decisions are at times comprehensible but mostly unrealistic. Her behavior often makes no sense at all. Her husband, for instance, comes across as a completely unambitious, child-caring, money-producing husband-robot. As for the Swiss, Coelho paints a damning picture of this society. All Swiss people appear to be capitalist zombies \u2014 unhappy, driving around in their flashy luxury cars, visiting utterly incompetent psychiatrists who naturally only want to rip them off. The miracle healer and shaman, on the other hand, is the good one \u2014 but even he doesn\u2019t want to have anything to do with the Swiss career bitch Linda. It\u2019s hard to imagine a more distorted, one-sided, and shallow worldview than the one Coelho presents here.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Conclusion:<\/strong> There was only one reason I finished this book: my train was delayed and stood at the platform forever. After this read, I can safely say that Coelho is not intellectually capable of offering a nuanced or comprehensive exploration of topics such as adultery, marriage, Swiss society, or the emotional life of women. This book, filled with superficial and empty phrases, meaningless lamentations, a flat plot, implausible and unrealistic characters, and failed dialogue, is a declaration of bankruptcy for literature itself. A book I can only advise everyone against reading. Do not read it under any circumstances.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Book information: <\/strong>Adultery<\/em> \u2022 Paulo Coelho \u2022 Diogenes \u2022 320 pages \u2022 ISBN 9783257069082<\/p>\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have already read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and found the book quite entertaining and rather fairy-tale-like. So I was all the more curious about a story by him set in the here and now. The protagonist is 31-year-old Linda, who lives in Geneva, is well-off, happily married, has a good job as a … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Adultery \u2022 Paulo Coelho”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Untreue \u2022 Paulo Coelho - lesestunden","description":"Von Paulo Coelho habe ich bereits Der Alchimist gelesen und fand das Buch ganz unterhaltsam und auch sehr m\u00e4rchenhaft. Um so gespannter war ich auf eine Geschic"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"_slim_seo_primary_term_category":0,"_slim_seo_primary_term_post_tag":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,20],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-1119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-paulo-coelho"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/coelho_untreue.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lesestunden.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}