VERONIKA DECIDES TO DIE 📖

 

 BOOK REVIEW : VERONIKA DECIDES TO DIE

    "Veronika Decides to Die" is a book written by Paulo Coelho, the author of the New York Times best seller, "The Alchemist". This book is a realistic fiction book that follows a woman named Veronika.  It is a beautiful tale of hope and happiness. The story revolves around Veronika, a young Slovenian woman who has everything that a woman in the prime of her life would want. She has a good job, a string of boyfriends and a family that loves her. However, she is not happy with her life and decides to commit suicide. After taking sleeping pills, she awaits her death which does not arrive. She wakes up in a hospital where she is told that the pills have shortened her life span and that she has only a few days to live. Within the walls of a mental hospital, Veronika falls in love with a person suffering from schizophrenia. The head psychiatrist at the hospital is trying to perform an experiment, which concerns Veronika in some manner.

Paulo Coelho teaches us about life and death in this book. We only realize the importance of our life when we are about to face death - the irony of life. An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely. In here, Veronika figuring out the true meaning of life, her emotions and her purpose inside of a mental hospital among many people who are labeled as mentally insane. Along the way she meets many influential characters. Veronika starts to live life more freely. After all, she’s in an insane asylum, and you can do anything you want there without people being surprised or thinking you’re weird. They already think that you’re insane. So, the overall theme and message of this story is a very good one about accepting the pain of life, enjoying it and not holding yourself back from how you feel and what you feel is right.

As far as characters go, there are some amazing and truly captivating ones in this story. The other patients in the hospital are nothing short of fascinating and unpredictable too. You will truly never be able to guess their reactions and every interaction between Veronika and her peers never gets boring or repetitive. On top of that, the interactions, conversations and experiences she shares with them are what makes her figure out more about herself and she tends to learn from them and start to understand what it means to be free and live happy. Seeing Veronika grow and discover new ways of life and discover more about herself is intriguing and the whole way through you feel a deeper connection to her and want her to become happy.  Veronica is that little voice inside all of us which asks existential questions that lead nowhere but which is also the reason why we want to make life worth living.  This book will change the way you think about life and hope.  The book ends with Veronika figuring out that she really isn’t going to die, and that Dr. Igor had only told her that as an attempt at a new way of getting patients to appreciate life due to the fact they think they have no time left. Which forces Veronika to feel all the emotions she’s been holding back for so long. 

Therefore, I’d like to add to the theme that I talked about earlier and say that the book is also about living in the moment and living like there is no tomorrow.