It always occurs to me that rarely do readers review Coelho's books. One of the world's best loved storytellers.
Then when I think of it it is really hard to review his books. They are literary conceptual extraveganzas that stay with you and you should keep a copy of it until you reach 70 and above.

In his latest riveting novel set in London, Athena, or Sherine ( the name she was baptised with ) tells her life through a series of recorded interviews with those people who knew her well or hardly at all. Brilliant. Her parents, colleagues, teachers, friends, acquaintances, and her ex-husband.

Athena is a mysterious woman, she was an orphanage in Romania, had a childhood in Beirut, then she moved with her adoptive family to London after teh war broke out. Then everything in her life changes.
Athena, who has been dubbed 'the Witch of Portobello' for her seeming powers of prophecy, disappears dramatically, leaving those who knew her to solve the mystery of her life and abrupt departure ...

If you are a Coelho fan then the rest is a challenging ride with love, spirituality, relationships, destiny, and freedom. Coelho trademarks.
Again, if you are a Coelho fan, you will find this review helpful since there is no easy and firm discribtion neither of his plot nor writings. He is more of an beautiful incident that just a writer.

I you sadly haven't read Coelho yet, go give yourself a kick start with The Alchemist and come back later to this review.

Hope I was useful. It's such an honor being allowed to comment on such a writer's magical work.

I have read quite a lot of Paolo Coelho's works, my favorites being The Alchemist and By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept. This is another compelling work by Coelho. As in most of his works, there is an enigmatic main character, in this instance a woman who is dead at the beginning of the book - the rest of the book deals with piecing her life through a series of first-person accounts. Born of Gypsy origins, she is adopted by a Lebanese couple and later calls herself Athena. She also seems blessed with spiritual powers and is filled with a certain restlessness that leads her on an amazing if unfocussed personal journey finally finding a mentor in a woman called Edda who helps her deal with her spiritual powers. The story moves along and we get to read of Athena's rise and inevitably, her demise, made compelling mostly through Coelho's consummate narrative skills. As always, Coelho's stories are about spirituality & the search for inner truth/self & will apppeal to those who are interested in the subject matter.

It's hard to find the words to describe the experience I had reading this book, as young woman I see parallels between both myself and the main charcter in the book, Athena. Her search for truth and meaning in life, the wavering line between behaving as a grown woman or a petulant child, questioning whether your own charisma impacts your fate or an unseen force, giving a name to the energy you feel flowing though yourself and through others.


The information below *could be* considered spoilers although this information is given within the first few pages of the book.
***SPOILERS***
***
**
*
The idea that Paulo had to piece together this book out of other people's accounts of Athena was a good one, it kept the storyline fresh, it kept me guessing, and never seemed to "cut away" too quickly to another person's point of view. The idea that God (male) is in heaven with rules that bind men to working in a ritualistic fashion to inhibit chaos from the Mother (female) who lives on Earth and revels in freedom as well as feeling, good or bad, was a theme I have heard before but found interpreted artfully in the novel.

However the different "accounts" often felt *FAR* too detailed to be accounts given by someone other than Athena herself (which is not the person who wrote the book, so rest assured that I haven't spoilt anything for you).

It was an amazing read, I was completely engaged from the first page to the last, Paulo's style is fluid, albeit recognizable to fans of The Alchemist. It was great to have the underlying unity of his words to the various accounts regarding Athena's life and death.

I regret to say the ending did not do the book justice, it felt as if the author saw the finish line and sprinted for it. I did not like wrapping up the life of a bold and humorous character that I had grown rather fond of, in a matter of 4 or 5 pages, shame on you Paulo. However, if I came away from the book with one important lesson, it is that the journey is just as important as the ending, although I still believe The Witch of Portobello should have been put to rest with more care.

Paulo Coelho of international fame for his book The Alchemist has here in The Witch of Portobello has woven a very unique and compelling tale. Part of what draws the reader in is the story itself and part is the very unique way it is written. Rather than a straight forward narrative, or a dialogue or even a series of letters this is a unique narrative technique. It is written as a series of first person accounts of individuals interactions with our unusual heroine Athena aka the Witch of Portobello.

These stories, taped interviews and letters have been compiled by a narrator we do not know until the end of the story. He has decided to let Athena's story be told as other's tell it, through their own words, and with all of their emotions, anger, support, respect or disgust. What we learn from these accounts is not only is Athena a bit of an enigma, from these accounts we could almost assume that almost every person encountered a different Athena, an Athena of the making in their own mind. The way the 'biography' is written it allows us to draw our own conclusions, rather than a traditionally researched biography that is colored by the lenses that cloud the vision of the biographer. Much as each of us look at the world through a series of lenses of our experiences, and cultural biases.

Athena is a young woman who tries to fill the spaces, the silences in her life. The more she tries to fill them the more dissatisfied she becomes. Until she learns that it is the silences between the notes that make the music so powerful. When she learns to embrace the silence, the spaces, she finds a power an energy. She becomes a spiritual leader, some see her as a saint and some see her as a sinner. She is both revered and feared. A saint and a demon. The compiled documents help us to see Athena for who she was.

So join our unknown biographer as we trace the life of a murdered young woman and journey around the world and into an unseen spiritual world. This book is better than some of Coelho's more recent offerings, and the narrative tool will draw you in and keep you turning the pages.

A warning though the book deals with earth religions and has some new age ceremonies in it, therefore it will not be for all readers.

(First Published in Imprint 2007-05-18 in the 'Book Review Column.)