Paolo Coelho is the undisputed king of pseudo-spirituality. In his books, he tries to come across, through his stories, as someone who sees something of life that the rest of the humanity doesn’t. In almost all cases, except when he’s using tired old cliches and well-known words of popular wisdom, his writing comes across as hogwash.
The Alchemist is the story of a shepherd chasing after a dream. It seems like an attempt at an allegory, or maybe a moralistic tale, but one doesn’t know exactly what. In it, though, Coelho doesn’t fail in sermonizing. He tells us how important omens are, how we should always try to read some significance into mere co-incidences, dreams, hallucinations and fantasies. The universe is trying to tell us something, something about our destiny: that seems to be his theme here. Of course, we all know the Universe couldn’t care less. Likewise, I couldn’t care less about this terrible self-help lecture piece masquerading as a novel.
I’m rating it 1-star only because it’s not possible to rate it 0 stars.