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By The River Piedra, I Sat Down & Wept
by Paulo Coelho

Reviewed by Christine Westwater
copyright 2004
All Rights Reserved

Have you ever read a book where you hated, or at least adamantly disliked, the protagonist and yet still enjoyed the book? Well, that’s how I feel about "By the River Piedra, I Sat Down & Wept" by Paulo Coelho. Coelho tells the story of a woman, Pilar, who goes on a physical, religious and emotional journey, exorcizing the woman she is to become the woman she wants to be. This is an admirable journey, and many of the lessons that Pilar learns are also available to the reader to learn. There are some passages that speak so truly, that your heart may fall into rhythm with the words. Somehow it feels right.

"OK, sometimes when I’m talking with someone and get excited about what I’m saying, I find myself saying things I’ve never said before. It seems almost as if I’m ‘channeling’ an intelligence that isn’t mine — one that understands life much better than me." Ever had that feeling? This is what I mean by right. This is the gift that Coelho brings to this story. However, with that gift also comes the protagonist, which detracts from the story and its truth.

Pilar is a 20-something woman juggling the roles of student and wage earner; she lives an average life. She’s a typical non-practicing Catholic. She’s had lovers; she has friends. There’s nothing noteworthy of her life when we are first introduced to her, except perhaps that she has maintained communication with one of her childhood friends. This childhood friend is never given a name, but he is the catalyst for Pilar’s journey, both physical and personal. We meet Pilar on the day that she goes to see him at a conference, where he is a featured speaker. He is a leader of a Catholic sect that focuses on the feminine face of Catholicism, and is speaking on this topic. He invites her to attend another meeting with him, and thus begins their journey that lasts only seven days.

During the journey, we are told that he performs miracles, although we never see him perform them. He shows Pilar and the reader that he loves and cares for her, and is ready to share a life with her. Yet, she is self-involved, always thinking of herself and how she must look or seem to other people. As a reader, you may be left to wonder why a man such as this would want a woman like Pilar.

As she is confronted with the first of many challenges to her beliefs during her journey, we see how controlling and closed-minded she is. She believes she is always right and as her mind starts to question her, she tries to shut the door on the questions, the desire to learn more, to ask "what if", to open the dam.

And for Pilar, the dam burst on day three of the journey. He tells Pilar the story of The Other. The Other is the person in all of us who worries over money, focusing only on the things to do to get more money to pay for our lives until the day we die, instead of focusing on "the mystery of life". The Other is afraid of anything outside the norm. The Other keeps you from growing, believing, testing your boundaries, and allowing miracles to come into your life. When you reject The Other, you banish them to the corner of your room, ignore their whispers that question your moves, until the whispers become more and more faint, until you hear only silence, until you are you and The Other is gone.

Once The Other is gone, Pilar opens herself up to a new way of thinking of her old religion, of herself, of her friend. At the end of the seven days, Pilar is in love with her friend, as he was with her from the beginning. Pilar’s metamorphosis from ice queen to a lover, whose heart is in open bloom, is the most distinct change for Pilar. She learns to love. She learns to accept. She learns to be curious. But it’s the loving that is most important. However, she is still controlling, but now controlling not only herself, but her lover as well.

The Other, the truth of Coelho’s language, the subtle imagery, Pilar’s friend/lover, they are all positive elements for the story, but Pilar holds the story back from being the true tome of loving inspiration that I think Coelho was trying to accomplish. Coelho is effective writing in the voice of a woman, but I wonder what he must think of women to write one so unbending in her belief of herself, and so bound to the control she must keep.

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