The Devil and Miss Prym

Hmmm... Paolo Coelho's books are always thought-provoking, aren't they? I've read The Alchemist and Veronika Decides to Die before and really liked them and I tried reading Eleven Minutes, but couldn't get into it. Is it worth trying again?

I enjoyed The Devil and Miss Prym, though not as much as the first two books of his that I read. This one's theme is good and evil - how they interact in the world and within each one of us. Are people intrinsically good or evil? A couple of ideas on this theme really struck me as I was reading. One of them was the notion that we are only good because of the threat of punishment, i.e. that we would do a lot more things 'wrong' if we didn't think we'd get into 'trouble'. This is probably true to some extent - maybe people wouldn't respect their hours at work if no one was watching; but I'm not sure that it means that more people would commit murder if they could go unpunished. What do you think?

The other idea that I liked is one that the author mentions in his introduction, namely that a week is enough time to show our true face/decide where our destiny lies/pass or fail a test of God or the Gods or the universe. I agree with Coelho on this - a week is plenty. I'm sure we've all had times in our lives when everything changed in one week.

So, thought-provoking and interesting, although I wasn't totally crazy about it, I can't really explain why... maybe I'm still not completely in the mood for 'heavy' books and it was giving me too much to think about! ;-)

Challenges: 10 out of 100 out of 1001 and the 1% Well-read Challenge, A-Z Challenge, Orbis Terrarum