Veronica decides to die by Paulo Coelho

Verónica decides to die is a novel by Paulo Coelho. I write the review in English, although I read the book in Spanish, so it may be that many aspects of the language of the book have disappeared in the translation.

The novel deals with several important themes that affect the lives of apparently ordinary people. But, perhaps due to social definition, perhaps through self-identification, perhaps as a result of the treatment given by experience, these people are usually treated in extraordinary ways. Veronica and her associates are treated in a very special way, receiving among other things insulin doses high enough to incapacitate and electroconvulsive therapy designed to stimulate temporary amnesia. All of them are, for the purposes of Veronica Decides To Die, inmates of an asylum.

And the location is important. The asylum, probably referred to by some as an insane asylum, is located in Ljubljana, Slovenia, just at a time when the former republic of Yugoslavia is in the process of disintegrating. There is a strange and, certainly within these pages, little-exploited parallel between the mental disintegration of these individuals and the breakdown of a state that has previously sought advantage in unity and incorporation. Thus the novel examines, though not too deeply, the relationship between sanity and madness, unity and separateness, individuality and society, the personal and accepted response.

Readers of the novel can discover plot elements. But nothing is revealed by recording the interactions between four of the asylum’s inmates, Veronika, Eduard, Zedka and Mari, who form the backbone of the book, along with their relationship with Doctor Igor, who is in charge of their care and also from his own research. Project. We come across the stories of these characters and find clues as to why they may have chosen less conventional ways of expressing themselves.

And it is the developing relationship between the eponymous Verónica and Eduard, a young schizophrenic, that forms the central axis of the story. At the beginning of the book, Veronica wants to die. She is depressed. She jokes about how no one on the planet seems to have any idea where her country of Slovenia might be as it emerges from the conflict, grief and growing ruin of Yugoslavia. But for Slovenia, nation status was being achieved for the first time in its modern history. It had always been part of some other place, perhaps as if each individual was forever incorporated into some social group loosely labeled “society.” Isolated, alone, many individuals struggle to define or cope with their own individuality, a void that, left unchecked or unfilled, can lead them down paths that become unknown.

In a way, Veronika’s despair at feeling alone in the world leads her to overdose. she survives. But she has changed, mentally and physically, so she is admitted to a nursing home for treatment. It is there that she meets Eduardo and others, whose individual histories have created her separation from what is perceived as normal by the rest of a vague notion called “society.” These main characters relive some of their past experiences to illustrate what might have caused the changes in their characters, transformations noted by others that led to their isolation.

Their stories are not unlike the unique concordance of events currently propelling a nation to an independence it has never known before. It was the rest of the world that created the conditions, but it was Slovenia that changed. For these people, something caused them to react or behave differently from the norm, hence their status, but it may have been the actions of others, or even circumstances, that created the conditions that changed them.

One weakness of Veronika Decides To Die lies in its tendency to be both analytical and rational, without really declaring itself rooted in either concept. Also, in the end, this may be her strength, because there is always room for interpretation. The characters within her pages discuss her relationship with the spiritual, the religious, and occasionally the chemically induced. They explore themselves, discovering new or previously unknown aspects of themselves and surprising themselves in the process.

In the end, the characters have compromised. But apparently they have been serving someone else’s purpose throughout, someone invested with the authority of society to observe and monitor. Whether that person is the doctor in charge of the nursing home or the writer holding the pencil is an interesting question.