"The Witch of Portobello"
“No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the purpose of light is to create more light, to open people’s eyes, to reveal the marvels around.” (pg. 1)
And so begins “The Witch of Portobello,” a 2006 novel by famed writer Paulo Coelho. Before I delve into the book itself, however, let me provide some words of context about why I was so excited to read this, and why I chose it to be my first book review on this blog. According to the book jacket (and this book is over a decade old), Coelho has collectively earned sales of more than 85 million copies worldwide, with his books translated into 63 languages and published in 150 countries. In my own opinion, few writers in the modern age write with the mastery and wisdom of Paulo Coelho; his writing never feels like the everyday 21-century novel, but rather some lost religious document- his words seem almost omniscient, as if he were a mere vessel for the stories he tells rather than the one inventing them. Like seemingly all others who have read his work, I am a massive fan of Coelho’s iconic “The Alchemist.” I consider that book to be one of the best written works of all time, and certainly one of the most profound I have read. That being said, I had high hopes for “The Witch of Portobello,” a book I found on an online list of recommendations for summer reads and decided to take on out of respect for the author.
While this story maintained the mysticism and spiritual themes of “The Alchemist,” it is apparent from the first page that “The Witch of Portobello” is a uniquely feminine story about the power and complexity of women. It is told from the accounts of different narrators who knew the main character throughout their lives, a format I was initially wary of but eventually appreciated as it gives insight into how the protagonist appears to those around her. Coelho himself confessed in an interview that the novel “revolves around the awakening of the female energy in both men and women.” Additionally, the fact that the main character is branded a "witch” takes on the issue of judgement towards strong women in society, especially those that commune with nature as a way to strengthen or master their own spiritual instincts. Coelho discussed what he deems an unfair prejudice against these practices and their relation to paganism, stating that “a witch is a woman that is capable of letting her intuition take hold of her actions, that communes with her environment, that isn’t afraid of facing challenges.” While these opinions of Coelho's are important themes that I appreciated and ones that are carried well throughout the story, the book is certainly not without its flaws.
Although its message certainly fascinated me, this is not a book I will likely remember well a year from today. The issue starts with the protagonist- there is no way to feel connected to her or relate to her. From the beginning, Athena seems to be a concept, a representation of something profound rather than a person herself. For example, she chooses the name Athena for herself when she is only a child, an obvious plot device to make the reader immediately feel that she is divine. This is likely intentional, but I felt it was far beneath a writer of Coelho’s skill. This impression of forced divinity grows stronger as the story moves forward, and I could not shake the disconnect it caused me to feel with her journey, and since her journey is the sole focus of the story, this undercut my enjoyment of the book massively. The story at times seemed self-indulgent, an ode to a protagonist who had done nothing to earn the reader’s sympathy. I wished there was more humanity to Athena, that I could have seen her grow instead of simply being told she had, that her supposed divinity was shown rather than stated, that every perspective given on her life was not one of hero worship, even the ones that claimed to be unfavorable. For fans of the mystic, this may not be a problem, but for a reader requiring more, it is damning. One aspect of Coelho's work that I admire is that he is unapologetically sentimental, but I felt in this story that he and I were on different pages and no amount of appreciation for him could bridge that gap.
To say I was disappointed would be an excessively harsh way to review this book. A more accurate way to describe the experience is that while the novel is certainly good, I was eager to reach the end. I do not regret having read it and would even like to discuss it further in the future to see if the problems I found in the story were unique to my tastes or central to the novel itself. I do recommend this novel because of its unique outlook on the world, but it is certain to be a "love it or hate it" book for most readers.
The themes of this novel are fascinating and worth discussing, but the execution of those themes is undermined by an unrelatable protagonist and the novel’s tendency to believe its own legend long before the reader does.
“Love simply is.” (pg.268)
“The Witch of Portobello.” Copyright 2006 by Paulo Coelho. For anyone interested in this book on a budget, feel free to check your favorite library or secondhand bookstore. It is also available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.