The Witch of Portobello (P.S.)

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Throughout the novel, Coelho’s words verifies the phrase: “How do we find the courage to always be true to ourselves—even if we are unsure of whom we are?”

As the book begins, Athena is dead. How she ended up that way creates the intrigue sustaining the book. [2] The child, Sherine Khalil renames herself Athena after her uncle was discussing with her mother on how her real name will betray her origins and something like Athena gave nothing away. As a child, she shows a strong religious vocation and reports seeing angels and saints, which both impresses and worries her parents. Shreine Khalil, known as Athena was born in Romania and her parents, a successful industrialist family of Beirut adopted her, as their much loved, much-wanted daughter, who grew in wisdom and beauty. From an early age she had a strong religious vocation and knew all the gospels by heart, which was a blessing and a curse. She had the secret desire to become a saint someday. She had everything one can ask for, and yet it didn’t satisfy her restless soul. Her adopted mother, who was always ready to take care of her, give her all the love and comfort she could, want to see her win in whatever she does, though didn’t understand her, who felt that “a mother doesn’t have to understand anything, she simply has to love and protect”. A father, who loved her, was ready to be by her side in whatever she does and believed and respected her opinions as most correct even when she was just a child. The best of education that she left before completing; got married and divorced with a son in twenty; left the Church, on which she had deep faith from her childhood, after it forbade her from receiving sacrament, due to her divorce; a good job in a bank what she left when she was being just more than successful; took the job of selling land in dessert and left that too when she was earning more than enough, a successful Journalist, whom she left, who was ready to leave everything to love her. She was a restless soul, whom the success and comfort couldn’t content, who was learning all her life to suffer in silence, abandoned again and again by her birth mother, then by her husband and then by the Church she was so attached to, was trying to understand the meaning of life, through dance reaching Vertex and through calligraphy and passing this energy, the secret of rejuvenation to everyone else. I decided to read this as part of a string of Paolo Coelho novels in a sort of marathon. This is the fourth in a row, and I must say the worst, by far.Through a series of interviews, multiple characters explained their experience and connection to her. We uncover pieces of who she was through different perspectives. But did anyone really know her? All her life, she felt a constant void that continuously nagged at her soul. The biggest question she consistently pursued an answer to was this: who am I? The rest of the novel is set as transcripts of interviews with different people in her life leading to her death in an effort to reveal who she really was. This is performed artfully by Paulo Coelho who strings a cohesive, intriguing story of the development of the protagonist and simultaneously presents the complex and differing views of who Athena is through the eyes of all the characters.

Mr. Coelho's latest book, "The Witch of Portobello," is the story of a young Romanian orphan adopted by a Lebanese couple. She opens her heart, gains intoxicating powers and becomes a controversial spiritual leader in London. Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda—Athena's great problem was that she was a woman of the 22nd-century living in the 21st and making no secret of the fact, either. Did she pay a price? She certainly did. But she would have paid a still higher price if she had repressed her natural exuberance. She would have been bitter, frustrated, always concerned about "what other people might think," always saying, "'I'll just sort these things out, then I'll devote myself to my dream," always complaining "that the conditions are never quite right." She grows into a woman in search of answers to many questions that arise within a person. She had a life which many felt was content because she had a child of her own, money, and friends; everything but her mind was at peace, so she searches for the answer to the classical question of "Who am I?" through many experiences. In her quest, she opens her heart to intoxicating powers of mother and becomes a controversial spiritual leader in London.This book is a meditation on discovering your spirituality outside of learned dogmatic practices; to find revelation by gathering pieces of the Truth that make sense to your soul. Mr. COELHO: I think that this is a recurring theme in our lives since the dawn of human kind. We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question. Discuss the world of magic versus the world of science or rationality—especially the belief held by many that, as Heron Ryan puts it, "anything science cannot explain has no right to exist." Where do you stand on this? Amazingly, Coelho survived these horrific experiences. He left the hippie lifestyle behind, went to work in the record industry, and began to write, but without much success. Then, in the mid-1980s, during a trip to Europe, he met a man, an unnamed mentor he refers to only as "J," who inducted him into Regnum Agnus Mundi, a secret society that blends Catholicism with a sort of New Age mysticism. At J's urging, Coelho journeyed across el Camino de Santiago, the legendary Spanish road traversed by pilgrims since the Middle Ages. He chronicled this life-changing, 500-mile journey—the culmination of decades of soul-searching— in The Pilgrimage, published in 1987.

This is the story of Athena, or Sherine, to give her the name she was baptised with. Her life is pieced together through a series of recorded interviews with those people who knew her well or hardly at all – parents, colleagues, teachers, friends, acquaintances, her ex-husband. Andrea McCain, actress—I was used and manipulated by Athena, with no consideration for my feelings. She was my teacher, charged with passing on the sacred mysteries, with awakening the unknown energy we all possess. When we venture into that unfamiliar sea, we trust blindly in those who guide us, believing that they know more than we do. The Virgin (and I am not speaking her of the sexual virgin) is the one whose search springs from from her complete independence, and everyghing she learns is the fruite of her ability to face challenges alone. Narrated from multiple points of view, the portrait of Athena that emerges is as provocative and spiritually complex as one would expect from the author of The Alchemist (1993) and The Devil and Miss Prym (2006).Coelho sets out a framework for thinking about Athena and our own lives through the the character Deidre O’Neill, a doctor also known as Edda and a teacher to Athena. Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Witch of Portobello: Heron Ryan, journalist—People create a reality and then become the victims of that reality. Athena rebelled against that—and paid a high price.

Is the world of sight, sound, and touch—the rational world —sufficient for you? Or do you seek another kind of reality, the one, perhaps, that Athena offered?

About the author

The Virgin (and I’m not speaking here of a sexual virgin) is the one whose search springs from her complete independence, and everything she learns is the fruit of her ability to face challenges alone. Normally, a women has to choose from one of these traditional feminine archetypes, but Athena was all four at once”