Review: Adultery

Paulo Coelho is best known for his best-selling novel The Alchemist, which remains on the New York Times bestseller list for the 320th week. His novels are usually categorised in the “Magical Realism” sections of online stores… but Adultery is one of his non-magical novels, in more ways than one.

There are no spoilers when it comes to a novel called Adultery. We follow Linda, a thirties-something married woman who is melancholic and bored. Sounds like a perfectly reasonable excuse to stalk a successful ex-boyfriend into having sex with her. Except that the novel doesn’t exactly follow the path you’d expect. There’s nothing wrong with this, except that the path it does take is confusing and irrelevant; Linda states she is not religious, yet the novel is littered with Bible references such as Paul’s letter to the Corinthians in an attempt to justify her actions.

The problem with this novel is that Linda isn’t some bored, lonely housewife looking to spice up her love life. She’s borderline psychopathic, stalking a guy after he denies her and then hates herself after every sexual encounter. She’s not a likable character, unable to be coherent in anything she does or says. The other main problem I have with the novel is the way it’s written. Dialogue between characters feels forced and one-sided, like Linda is actually conversing with the reader and not another person.

In all, the novel is exceedingly disappointing and rather boring as well.

2/5 bookmarks

Life’s Little Lessons

You know, this was going to be a positive post about believing in yourself and overcoming what people say. It’s been going through my head for the past week. But now, it’s going to be a lovely post about something that happens in life that we have no control over. Here’s my advice:

Whatever you do, however good you are or how much you put yourself out there, someone will always fuck you over.

Recently I went to ‘Behind the Myths’ starring the Mythbusters. During a Q&A session, Adam Savage revealed he only had a high school diploma and although he’d studied many things, he was mediocre at all of them. This stuck with me because it reinforces something I’ve always believed: You don’t have to be the best to be successful. It was a really inspiring message for me and has stuck with me ever since the event. I’m only average, nothing special. And this holds me back from doing what I really want to do, because I don’t think I’m good or smart enough.

But then something happened today that also reinforced one of my beliefs: Someone will always fuck you over, and often, you won’t know about it because they’re too chicken shit to say anything, you’ll just find out on your own which makes you look like the idiot.

And people wonder why I lost faith in humanity a long time ago. No one’s nice anymore and if you are, no one appreciates it. No one has manners or common sense. We’ve become a society so focused on ourselves we’ve forgotten how to treat other human beings.

Finishing something important to me is a giant FUCK YOU to the haters, and haters gonna hate. There are times when I want to let the haters win and there are times I want to let myself win. Some days, like today, just make me determined to take the high road and not worry about what others think of me. They are welcome to be trapped in their own world of egotistical bullshit where they are the holy ones looking down over the plebs not deemed worthy. What’s that saying about the meek inheriting the Earth?

Anyway, be nice to people. Be courteous and polite. Compliment a stranger and hold a door open for them. And say a giant fuck you to everyone else.