By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

A love story raging within a circle of spirituality. I have to say, the obvious ending was nothing but disappointing. But it would've been equally disappointing had it ended in the exact opposite manner.

The story is confused, and many a time, plain confusing. I do not see the point behind making the protagonist a "spiritual teacher". He could've been a passionate musician, artist, poet, anything. After all, if a conflict of emotions/passions is what the writer wanted to portray, any conflict would've done just as well, to come in conflict with that other passion - love.
Immersing the central conflict into a swamp of spiritual/religious mumbo-jumbo seems like a flimsy way to piece together a story.

Coelho has his moments though. Some ideas are very well presented, but they get lost in the jargonized labyrinth that is the book By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept.

Having read two books by this author, I am forced to acknowledge that he's somewhat obsessed with the notion that life is mundane. That each day is like every other day. That human beings are becoming, more and more, like zombies. It seems to me quite a negative outlook to the glorious adventure life is and can be.
If in Victoria Decides to Die, Coelho manages to affirm the beauty of existence, in this book he only manages to repeatedly announce how bleak and dreary the entire experience can be.
This definitely isn't a book I'd recommend to anyone. The one thing it accomplishes is that it makes it necessary for me to read more Coelho just so I can figure out what kind of writer Coelho is and why in the world is he a celebrated one. For now we will just put our feelings on "ambivalent" - very much so!