Adultery

by Paulo Coelho Narrated by Susan Denaker

Overview

I want to change. I need to change. I'm gradually losing touch with myself.

Adultery, the provocative new novel by Paulo Coelho, best-selling author of The Alchemist and Eleven Minutes, explores the question of what it means to live life fully and happily, finding the balance between life's routine and the desire for something new.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

06/30/2014
Coelho’s disappointing new novel suffers from its lead character’s navel-gazing. After an interview subject reveals his thoughts about living a passionate life to buttoned-up Linda, a 30-something journalist, mother, and wife to a loving, wealthy husband, she begins to believe her own life is empty. From there, she initiates an erotic affair with a high school boyfriend even after her first come-on leads him to suggest she enter marriage counseling. Her emotional nosedive includes an outrageous plan to win him over, and she ponderously dwells on John Calvin, St. Paul, King Solomon, Frankenstein, and Jekyll and Hyde. Coehlo’s best work is personal and expansive, whether it concerns a Jewish prophet in the ninth century B.C.E. (The Fifth Mountain) or a young shepherd (The Alchemist) traveling widely in pursuit of treasure. Unfortunately, this novel’s constrained Geneva setting lacks expansiveness, and what is personal quickly becomes plodding. For most of the story, Coelho abandons his beautifully spare, evocative prose in favor of overwrought sentences, returning to form only as the story nears its end. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

"Propulsive.... A compelling tale of existential angst, marital betrayal and sexual sin." —The Chicago Tribune

Library Journal

10/01/2014
The title says it all: the latest work by one of the world's best-selling authors (The Alchemist) follows what ensues when a happily married female journalist suddenly meets her successful politician ex-boyfriend.

Kirkus Reviews

2014-07-01
A Swiss journalist strives toredress the meaninglessness of her life with even more meaningless sexualencounters in Coelho's latest pseudo-philosophical screed.Linda, a respected newspaperreporter in Geneva, is happily married to a handsome, wealthy and generousfinancier. The couple is blessed with beautiful and well-behaved children, atleast from what we see of the progeny, which isn't much. The vicissitudes ofdomestic life aren't Coelho's concern unless they offer a pretext forplatitudes about the eternal verities and The Things That Matter. When sheinterviews Jacob, a former flame from school days who's now a risingpolitician, Linda behaves professionally right until she administers a partingblow job. The ensuing affair jolts Linda out of the low-grade depression shehas been experiencing despite her enviable lifestyle. Her adulterous behaviordisturbs her, however, since she can't explain her own motives. After brieflytrying therapy, she consults a Cuban shaman, to no avail (except to generate asuccessful series of in-depth features on occult healing). Her bafflement isshared by the reader, who will be puzzled by the total lack of any convincingreason why she should be so infatuated with Jacob, who, in addition to beingvery thinly portrayed, apparently can't decide whether his amorous strategyshould be sensitive and romantic or something 50 or so shades greyer. After aclose call—Jacob's astute spouse almost exposes her—Linda decides that thefling isn't worth destroying lives over, as if these shallow existences wereunder any threat to begin with. Along the way to this realization, Coelho milkseach opportunity to preach—by way of endless interior monologues, quotes from Scriptureand talky scenes—sermons about love, marriage, sexual attraction, evolutionarytheory and every other imponderable he can muster. Occasional interestingtidbits about the novel's setting, the French-speaking Swiss canton of Vaud,are not enough to redeem the pervasive mawkishness.More trite truthiness from Coelho.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169322965
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/19/2014
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

"I WAKE up and perform the usual rituals—brushing my teeth, getting dressed for work, going into the children’s bedroom to wake them up, making break- fast for everyone, smiling, and saying how good life is. In every minute and gesture I feel a weight I can’t identify, like an ani- mal who can’t quite understand how it got caught in the trap. My food has no taste. My smile, on the other hand, grows even wider so that no one will suspect, and I swallow my desire to cry. The light outside seems gray. Yesterday’s conversation did no good at all; I’m starting to think that I’m headed out of the indignant phase and straight into apathy.
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Adultery"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Paulo Coelho.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos