My wife knows that I love past centuries and the stories of the past era and if she finds anything interesting, she buys it as a gift. I am talking about books. She bought 'Hippie' by Paulo Coelho a couple of months ago.
I have always been fascinated by Hippie stories. I have read all of his books, yet I am not a feisty fan of him. Some of his works are just a typical story. Alchemist was not mind-blowing but had a charming story, I was compelled by his narration.
Here it is, Hippie, I had gone through halfway to the semi-autographical novel and stopped reading further. Why am I labelling it’s a semi-autobiographical? It’s because I lost interest in POV; it’s written in third person, limited narration, which does not literally seem to fit in the story as we used to label as an autobiography for this kind of genre. Maybe Paulo didn’t want to be egoistic on his writing, right? How do we believe him that he is narrating his own adventitious journey, which he embarked from Amsterdam to Kathmandu? That did make no sense to his writing calling himself as another person! If he was trying to be redeemable for his humiliation then he should have chosen another name for the protagonist, it really gave me head desk. It feels like he was peeking from outside into his own world and was struggling to get in.
I have gone more than through halfway because, all the same, the story was set in my country’s capital, but he pulled me down and throw away from his book.
In the writing, POV is the most important tool that determines how a writer can express himself to the reader. The first person is the widely used point of view to tell a story and as far as I believe it is the most honest way to tell your story. I find a bit tricky to use third person omniscient, but it is my best one. Paulo used third person limited, albeit we know that he is telling his own story. Here, the reader will have to struggle to find writer’s perspective if he is well known and all, the reader will get confused because his unconscious psyche always works behind the writer’s reputation, parse it is the fact. As we know that third person POV hinders to express feelings, emotions and rational realities, but anyway the best example of this genre is Harry Porter and Sorcerer’s Stone where we can get the best writing using the third person.
All the same, younger version of Paulo didn’t attract me, though I haven’t finished the story, but I reckon the exposition is too much I must skip paragraph now and then. Maybe I am a bad reader. Maybe the writer hesitated to express his feeling through YOUNG Paulo which I was expecting to read. The conflict was whether it was memoir or fiction? If it was a fiction it lacked pertinent advancement in story. Reader must struggle and set aside autobiography side to perceive the scenario of Mr. young Paulo because, in this case, we know the author well.
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