BOOK REVIEW
M. Gautham Machaiah
Why do women in perfectly happy
marriages cheat on their doting husbands? What drives them to adultery? This is
the crux of Paulo Coelho’s latest offering ‘Adultery’,
which concludes that what kills a relationship between two people is not merely
the absence of love, but monotony and lack of adventure.
Coelho has handled this delicate
subject beautifully, making the book hard to put down, though at times he deviates
from the main frame of the story with unnecessary details, without which a lot
of paper could have been saved.
‘Adultery’ is the story of Linda, a journalist in her thirties,
whose husband is madly in love with her.
He is the owner of a large investment firm and is one of the 300 richest
people in Switzerland. Linda has everything that life can offer, including two
children who are the “reason for my living” and the best clothes that money can
buy.
In Linda’s words, “I have married
one, the only one who is absolutely perfect. He does not drink or go out at
night, and he never spends a day along with friends. The family is his entire
life.”
A fairy tale marriage one would
say, but not Linda who sees strains in her ten-year-old wedding, where there
are none. She is a woman who is torn
between the terror that everything might change and the equal terror that
everything might carry on the same for the rest of her days.
As she battles loneliness and
even early signs of depression, Linda realises the monotony of doing the same
thing every day has taken the spice away from her life. Love alone is not
enough to stop the magic disappear out of life.
That is when she comes in touch
with her ex-boyfriend Jacob Koing who is now a promising politician. The first
meeting ends in a sexual act, leading to a passionate extra-marital affair: “Incapable
of solving my own problems, I created a situation where I had the ideal family
and the perfect lover. I got adventure and joy.”
The author gives a graphic description
of their sexual escapades, which strikes a jarring note among loyal readers who
look towards Paulo Coelho for his incisive thinking and philosophy, rather than
soft porn. Sidney Sheldon’s pen does not go well in Coelho’s hands.
Linda’s is not an isolated case,
as all married people have a secret crush. “It is forbidden, and flirting with
the forbidden is what makes life interesting. But very few people take it
further; only one in seven. Only one in hundred is capable of getting confused
enough to get carried away by fantasy. For most, it is nothing more than a
fling, something you know from the beginning will not last long. A little
thrill to make sex more erotic and hear ‘I love you’ shouted out at the moment
or orgasm. Nothing more,” says the author.
Men and women have the same desire to cheat
their partner; it just happens that women have more self control.
And if married people for
whatever reason decide to look for another partner, this does not necessarily
mean that the couple’s relationship is not doing well, nor is sex the primary
motive. It has more to do with boredom, with a lack of passion for life, with a
shortage of challenges. It is a combination of factors. It is these factors that drove Linda to her
ex-boyfriend Jacob who “gave me back some of my joy I had lost, keeping me from
the pit of loneliness I had been drowning in up to my neck”.
The book serves as an eye-opener
to both, husbands and wives who live under the delusion of a happy married life,
while the monsters of monotony and boredom silently destroy the foundation, until
one day the house crumbles.
As the author puts it, “What
kills a relationship between two people is precisely the lack of challenge, the
feeling that nothing is new anymore. The key is to continue to surprise each
other...to learn to love better, because life is not a vacation, but a constant
process of learning.”
QUOTABLE QUOTES
We are the ones who create the
messes in our heads, it does not come from outside. All you have to do is to
ask the aid of your guardian spirit who enters your soul and helps tidy your
house
One day, those who are blind
begin to see. Those who are sad are comforted. Those who suffer are saved. The
knight arrives to rescue us, and life is vindicated once again.
Everyone at some point has felt
completely and utterly alone. But instead of looking for companionship, we
isolate ourselves even more in order to lick our wounds in silence
Going after a dream has a price.
It may mean abandoning our habits, it may make us go through hardships, or it
may lead us to disappointments. But however costly it may be,it is never as
high as the price paid by people who did not live. Because one day they will
look back and hear their own heart say: ‘I wasted my life."
Let us make peace with our days.
We cannot forget that life is on our side. It also wants to get better. Let us
help it out
Men do everything to hide their
weaknesses and any eighteen-year-old girl can manipulate them without much
effort
I hiked with my dad as a teenager
and I stopped every minute to take pictures until he fumed: “Do you think all this
beauty and grandeur can fit in a little square of film? Record things in your
heart. It’s more important than trying to show people what you are
experiencing.”
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