Brida | Paulo Coelho | Book Review

“Magic is a bridge. A bridge that allows you to walk from the visible world over into the invisible world, and to learn the lessons of both those worlds.”

 

- The Magus, Brida by Paulo Coelho

 

 

Book Description

 

Brida, Paulo Coelho’s one of the most popular novels, is a story about a beautiful young Irish girl who sets on a journey to discover the wisdom of the universe. On her quest, she meets a wise man who teaches her to conquer fear and a woman who takes her back to the divine secret power of the mortals. 

With their help, Brida rediscovers her life’s greater purpose and finds herself between the visible and the invisible. With her Gift, she seeks her eternal destiny while struggling to find her Soulmate - a greater love that transcends time and space - through the two different traditions of magic.

Brida is a story of finding and rediscovering love with its only risk, making mistakes, controlling wild emotions, experiencing intense passion, and seeking the eternal mystery of the universe through spirituality.

  

Book Review

 

I have mixed feelings about this book. Brida is a magical book, no doubt, but exceptionally spiritual. Although I am okay with philosophical and (subtle) spiritual approaches, diving straight forward into spirituality inexplicably linked with religion put me a bit off at some places. 

The book is extremely powerful in its execution, but some places are too overwhelming for me. Maybe my own inability to comprehend religious spirituality made it more unrealistic, and Coelho’s claims that the story is inspired form real incidents did not help. It made the entire approach more confusing. Treating the whole book as a pure work of fiction with adequate metaphors would have helped me to accept it in a better way. 

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate the book. I love it - for certain parts - but, I also don’t believe in the rest. The book seems so close yet so unknown. It is a type of book that, in my opinion, will come of as exceptionally different as you read it at a different, more spiritually mature (or interested) age. 

I won’t comment on Coelho’s writing since it’s extraordinary as always. 

Brida is essentially a love story, but unlike any other it is intertwined with the spiritual connotations that portrays finding one’s soulmate as a divine task. It shows the actual power of love and defines love as something that let’s you continue on your journey - of the known as well as the unknown. The book binds natural with the supernatural in the most intriguing way, presenting the reader with a experience that invokes your belief for the extraordinary of the universe or just doesn’t. 

As I said, I have mixed feelings about this book. I am very much grateful that I picked up the book. And I somewhat hate reading the book with all its intensity, because it is forcing me to feel about the world in a different way. 

Pros

The book is beautiful in all its simplicity and complexity. Thee is always something for every individual in the book. And it has magic.

Cons 

Brida is exceptionally spiritual, often overwhelming. The book plays with your imagination as it claims to be inspired from real events. 

(Suggestion: You can skip the Prologue)

  

Who Can Read It?

 

If you are someone who wants to read about the mysteries of the universe, soulmates, traditions of magic, and complicated witchcraft rituals, then Brida can be good for you.

 

 

Until next time.

XOXO