Book Review - The Devil and Miss Prym , Paul Coehlo

Paulo Coelho, is most widely known as author of The Alchemist, which I read at some point last year, but this is a review of a book I have just finished this year! The Devil and Miss Prym is the third novel in his trilogy And on the Seventh Day which began with By the River Piedra, I Sat Down and Wept and Veronika Decides to Die



Synopsis

A stranger arrives in the small mountain village. He carries with him a backpack containing a notebook and eleven gold bars. Burying these in the vicinity, the stranger strikes up a curious friendship with a young woman from the village -- Miss Prym. His mission is to discover whether human beings are essentially good or evil. In this stunning new novel, Paulo Coelho's unusual protagonist sets the town a moral challenge from which they may never recover. A fascinating meditation on the human soul, The Devil and Miss Prym illuminates the reality of good and evil within us all, and our uniquely human capacity to choose between them.

It was very hard to put down being a very fast moving plot, albeit told in the very slow setting of a mountain village in some nameless country in Latin America. A classic tale of the fight of good against evil, simply told and portrayed. Plenty of twists and turns and lovely little side tales of the past add to it's rich content, simply put, the central question posed is "Are People Bad" which is explored at depth. Evil in the red corner with good in the blue corner slog it out through this slim volume. Although an ending with good triumphing is to be expected, the author makes it very plausible that this will not transpire, and the outcome is still quite unexpected.
Read & Enjoy! 8.5/10