I enjoyed this book and there were a few truths revealed to me in it. Sometimes they were things I should know but prefer to lie to myself about. For instance the fact that you don't have to ignore beauty to have your intellect and ability recognised. I have spent half my life fighting against this and it will take years to undo the damage, I hope I have the courage to persevere and discover what it would mean to be beautiful and intelligent.

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Rating: 2 1/2 stars

Brida is… interesting. I’ve read a few books that are translations from the original language or dialect, but this is the first time I’ve read a work of fiction that was a translation and it just felt… awkward? It’s been a few weeks since I’ve finished reading Brida and I’m still trying to figure out if my feeling of awkwardness comes from the translation or Coelho’s writing style.

All that being said, Brida is an intriguing character as she is a young woman who simply decides that she wants to be a witch. The story starts off with her quest to find the Magus, a potential teacher/mentor for her to follow on the path of the sun, a spiritual path open to those who choose to study witchcraft. The Magus, however, realizes that the path of the sun is not Brida’s destiny but that she is, in fact, his soul mate. The Magus points her in the direction of Wicca, a teacher of the path of the moon, which seems to fit Brida better on a spiritual level.

Brida takes an interesting approach to the world of magic be enveloping it in to organized religion and taking it beyond Wiccan culture. The paths of the sun and moon are described as paths to God. The book is a discussion of the “meaning of life” through Brida’s decision to become a witch. She learns to dance to the music of the world, use all five of her senses simultaneously, and ultimately get the most out of life. She goes through a crisis of “faith” or two and doubts her abilities and life choices. Overall, though, I think I was ultimately disappointed because it was about an extraordinary subject but just felt so ordinary and scatter-brained. ( )

A Brida, una joven irlandesa de veintiún años, le interesa la magia, pero quiere ir más allá y profundizar en sus poderes. Para ello, irá en busca de personas de gran sabiduría, y conocerá al Mago, quien la guiará en su camino. En la exploración de su destino, Brida descubrirá, junto al lector, el poder transformador del amor y tratará de encontrar el equilibrio entre sus relaciones y el deseo de convertirse en bruja. Brida es un fascinante relato basado en una historia real que mezcla pasión, misterio y espiritualidad, grandes temas que los lectores de Paulo Coelho reconocerán.

I have had mixed emotions while reading this book. Sometimes I think that my ideas may have been prejudiced by pandemic situation of the world today. Nevertheless, I want to post this review as a reminder to myself of my initial thoughts in relation to this book.

At first, I got a hard time getting along with the book. The story started with narratives stating about the gift, the light, the universe, and so on. And by continuously reading several books of Paulo, somehow I got tired of the same point over and over again. However, since I love the way Paulo presented the same idea in The Alchemist, I decided to give this book another chance after putting it down plenty of times.

The mysteries of the topic soulmate or destiny has long puzzled me. And being someone who believes that we could live independently on our own and that we should not waste so much time trying to find “the one”, I have raised so many doubts in this book. However, despite that belief, I still found this book worth reading due to the many ideologies presented such as the thought that “people will never know the ultimate reason of existence because that main objective of the Architect of the Universe is to know Him alone and no one else.” I also love how Brida was able to achieve her goal from the very start. She just found about the soulmate thing as an incidental learning from her primary lessons.

Setting aside all the ideas presented in relation to witchcraft (which I found somehow disturbing especially for most parts), the plot seemed ordinary which was good somehow. The plot was simple yet thought-provoking. The ending was not quite clear to me but I think it was the best way to end the story. It gave me a sense of wonder about Brida’s choices. If my interpretation is right, Brida chose to stay with Lorens despite his budding love for The Magus. I think that’s brave. She had said in the earlier part of the story that she is incapable of commitment. And the fact that she honored her commitment with Lorens is one of the things I admire about her. Another thing, I love the way that the story was concluded with a thought that we may have more than one soulmate in this lifetime and even though you may end up with only one, maybe, just maybe, in another lifetime, you may end up finally in each other’s arms, because after all, soulmates always find each other. Always.

Overall, I think the story is nice but still not as good as “The Alchemist”. ( )

The Alchemist stands as one of my favorite books of all time. But after rather stumbling through the Witch of Portabello, Fifth Mountain, and now Brida, I'm thinking that Paulo Coelho could be a one hit wonder for me.

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