The Alchemist is a good book for juvenile reading. Its a good book but not a great book. Its for those yet wet behind the ears and who have to gain yet in years. Its brash enthusiasm and optimism are unrealistic to such an extant that miracles are supposed to drop at the drop of a hat and Don Quixote seems more real than it.
Yes, magic realism has been well used, but, overall, the book seems to be a compendium of some philosophies that the anxity-ridden mind of the modern man seems eager to seize and relish. It’s appeal lies in its simplicity.
Yet, as a philosophical work it just carries those ’feel good’ philosophies which are taught nowadays to company officials and management graduates - that way, its a cheaper bargain to read the book than to pay a hefty price for the calm of your mind to a modern age ’guru’. The book refuses to stand firmly on realistic ground, even on loose sandy ground. The character of Saintiago doesnt carry the depth of Saintiago in Hemingway’s ’’The Old Man and the Sea’’.
Even without miracles and the spice of love, Hemingway’s novel is more realistic, mature and readable. Still, one can read The Alchemist either to feel perked up or to get a cynical smile.