Book Review : Brida

Title : Brida

Author : Paulo Coelho

Birda is a book that explores the theory of occult and that of soulmate. Twenty year old Brida is in search of a teacher who could guide her to learn magic. She wants to be on a spiritual journey of self-discovery. Her search leads her to a man, The Magus, who recognizes Brida as his soulmate but  does not share this realisation with her. He puts Brida to a test which she completes and the wisdom that she takes out of that test stays with her for the following steps. She is then led to another teacher Wicca who happens to be Magus's ex-lover but follows a different tradition of magic. On the day that is ascertained as Brida's initiation day, she gets to understand that there  is a possibility of meeting two soulmates in one lifetime as well.

While I highly appreciated 'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho, the same cannot be said about Brida. The first point where the disconnect starts to surface is when the author mentions the tradition of Sun and the tradition of Moon but never explains what they exactly are, which is sure to leave the readers guessing and intrigued. As the narrative progresses, the missing link never gets repaired and hence it keeps losing the readers. However, one continues to read through it with the hope that since it is Paulo Coelho's book, eventually it will lead to something really grand and special, but that never happens. The storyline is sketchy and jumps from magic, mysticism, auras, gift, to soul mates making it a potpourri of daze and confusion.

However, there are some quotes worth mentioning here which salvages the book to some extent :

"Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day."

"Judging oneself to be inferior to other people is one of the worst acts of pride, because it's the most destructive way of being different."