The Devil and Miss Prym

September 1, 2001
Acclaimed Brazilian author Coelho presents the third title in a trilogy that began with the novels A orillas del Rio Piedra me sent y llore (By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, Planeta, 1998) and Veronika decide morir (Veronika Decides to Die, Planeta, 2000), both of which concern a week in the life of an ordinary person suddenly confronted with love and death. Like these two titles, Coelho's new novel reflects his professed belief that the most profound changes in individuals and in society occur in brief periods of time, as the result of extreme challenges. In this case, Coelho's fable revolves around the question of whether people will commit evil in order to gain wealth and power. After burying some gold in the forest, a visitor arrives in a small village in the Pyrenees and initiates a power struggle among the villagers by offering to give them the gold if they kill one of their own. Coelho best explains the personal crisis of the villagers through the young barmaid Chantal, who becomes the visitor's messenger and struggles with her choices and beliefs about good and evil in humankind. Coelho has been called a New Age writer for his use of allegories, moral messages, and uplifting life lessons. Although some readers might not agree with his preaching, the intriguing and fluid plot will keep them interested, just as it did in his six previous best-selling novels. Recommended for public libraries and bookstores with a New Age section. Lynn Shirey, Harvard Coll. Lib., Cambridge, MA

February 27, 2006
New to the U.S. but first published in Europe in 1992, Coelho's latest (following the bestselling The Zahir
) is an old school parable of good and evil. When a stranger enters the isolated mountain town of Viscos with the devil literally by his side, the widow Berta knows (because her deceased husband, with whom she communicates daily, tells her) that a battle for the town's souls has begun. The stranger, a former arms dealer, calls himself Carlos and proposes a wager to the town: if someone turns up murdered within a week, he'll give the town enough gold to make everyone wealthy. Carlos ensures people believe him by choosing the town bartender, the orphan Chantal Prym, as his instrument: he shows her where the gold is, confides that his wife and children have been executed by kidnapper terrorists (remember: 1992), and that he is hoping his belief that people are basically evil will be vindicated. Chantal would like nothing better than to disappear with the gold herself and thus faces her own dilemmas. Add in corrupt townspeople (including a priest), sometimes biting social commentary and, distastefully, a very heavily stereotyped recurring town legend about an Arab named Ahab, and you've got quite a little Garden of Eden potboiler. But the unsatisfying ending lets everyone off the hook and leaves questions hanging like ripe apples.