I recently finished The Alchemist for the first time. I thought it was good. Straightforward and entertaining (imo). I thought that would be the general opinion of people about the Alchemist and that Coelho is revered by book readers. But I was honestly surprised to find out majority of the readers don’t like his work and think of him as a ‘mediocre’ writer. Is there something I don’t know? Why isn’t he highly esteemed amongst bibliophiles like I thought he was?
P.S. I also think that the writing in Alchemist could’ve been better, but I liked the story.
The Alchemist was wildly popular, especially amongst women. I swear, every wannabe yoga teacher circa 2000 had a copy next to their copy of The Four Agreements. ‘New Age’ had gone from super popular to a performative exoticism that verged on cultural appropriation, and there was a backlash against it.
Personally, I didn’t hate The Alchemist but also didn’t love it. Coelho supposedly only wrote it in two weeks, and that checks out. I picked up a copy in Spanish while on vacation in Costa Rica—I don’t speak Portuguese so Spanish was the closest I could get to the original. It was worse in Spanish though.