The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho

There are three things you need to know before you read my review of this book. 1. This genre is one that I have never chosen to read, I don’t think I have even looked at the shelf in the bookshop. 2. I don’t believe in any religion or god. 3. I originally started this book as something to put me to sleep.

Knowing all that, you would be surprised to hear that I did quite enjoy this book. It was recommended to me by a friend and after Millie passed it over, I thought I’d give it a go. I wasn’t expecting to like it and so picked it up as I was going to bed, hoping that it would make me sleepy.

The prologue did not give much hope for the rest of the book as it seemed too outlandish. If you choose to believe that such acts are possible due to religion, then that’s your choice, but for me, I had to think of the miraculous acts as magical realism rather than acts of God.

Once I had sorted that out in my mind, it was actually a really easy read. What I was expecting to take me over a week, took me less than three days. The narrative recollects Paulo Coelho’s pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago after he fails his initiation into RAM (Regnus Agnus Mundi- which I have never heard of before reading this book). The goal of the pilgrimage is to find the sword that shows he has succeeded in his initiation.

I found myself more interested in the journey than the quest. Usually, I’m rooting for the protagonist to reach their destination and complete their quest, but in this book, I didn’t particularly care because it was obvious, to me, that the journey was much more important. It was different from a lot of the books that I read, but I found myself enjoying that.

Reading the book was very much like a journey itself, each word you read was a step forward and each chapter was the next landmark reached. Thus, it was very easy to find myself reading large chunks of the book without realising it, because it flowed continuously, like an easy-going journey. It was a change of pace.

Overall I would give this book three stars. I enjoyed it, but not enough to read again, nor do I think it changed my life in any way. It may have been four stars if I wasn’t constantly questioning the validity of some of the miraculous acts or trials. I believe that for some of the acts Paulo Coelho may believe he saw what he recorded but others were too fantastical for me to believe.

C🌙