Veronika Decides to Die

Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die, is actually an amazing look at life. The book is being made into a movie starring Sarah Michelle Geller. I decided to not wait for the movie and start with the book.

Veronika is a 24 year old, beautiful woman from Ljubjana, Slovenia. On the outside, she has the perfect life, a high paying job and everything she ever wanted available to her. But the sameness of the everyday grind gets to Veronika who feels she has nothing left to live for. She attempts to commit suicide by ingesting too many sleeping pills.

However, her suicide attempt fails, and instead she ends up in a mental hospital in Slovenia. At the hospital she is told she has a week to live because of the damage the pills did to her heart.

In the mental hospital she meets many unique patients. Zedka, has clinical depression, Mari a lawyer that gets panic attacks, and Eduard a student that has schizophrenia. Throughout the book you learn their backgrounds and what brought them to Villete. The reader also learns more about Dr. Igor, Villete’s head psychiatrist.

Through the novel, Veronika explores a relationship with the mental patients and in the end realizes freedom and the will to live.

Veronika Decides to Die is a novel that leaves a strong impression on the reader. While slow in the beginning, the middle and end make it an amazing read. The reader is taken on a journey where one learns that it’s up to the person to make the most out of every day. What is “being crazy” ? Is someone acting crazy or just living and refusing to go through a boring existence? Will we all decide to live once it’s too late? Not if you read this book. I challenge you to read the book and not evaluate your own life. Decide to be a little crazy and live or let life pass you by.

Here is a trailer from the upcoming movie due out in November 2009:

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