Sometimes you have to lose yourself to discover who you are Adultery. Coelho believes that the kind of dissatisfaction that can lead to adultery is a soul sickness. His protagonist, Linda, is a married woman whose restlessness finds its natural resting place in adultery. Linda lives and works in Geneva as a journalist, using the cover of her work to re-engage with the politician Jacob Konig, whom she kissed as a teenager. Although having the "perfect life", Linda feels dissatisfied and suffers from an all-consuming angst that she cannot justify even to herself. She is compulsively drawn to see her wish to take a lover through to its possibly destructive end, engineering the adulterous moments, enjoying the thrill they give her. Eventually, repenting of this, she spends a weekend away, hang-gliding, with her husband and it is this existential experience that allows her to transcend her dilemmas. So, asks Coelho, why does Linda act as she does? And of course the answer - as any reader of his books knows - lies not directly within the apparent question, but in a "soul" answer.
Linda is an unconvincing character who does not suffer any negative consequences from having committed adultery. There is a feeling that Coelho’s storyline is merely a backdrop for him to punctuate with his beliefs and the conclusions that he has reached about the meaning of life. Presumably his loyal readership will accept this narrative in order to connect with these beliefs, but for others, reading Adultery can be quite jarring.
An example of this comes when the author interrupts Linda's first person narration, which drives the story, to speak in his authorial voice: "After three years of marriage, the person already knows what the other wants and thinks... Sex goes from being a passion to a duty... Women hang out and brag of their husbands' insatiable fire, which is nothing but an outright lie. Everyone knows this but no one wants to be left behind." And later, towards the conclusion of the book, Coelho appears again, to say: "Those who know how to love Truth, rejoice with the truth, and do not fear it, because sooner or later it redeems everything. They seek the Truth with a clear, humble mind lacking prejudice or intolerance – and are ultimately satisfied with what they find."
Reading Adultery reminded me of walking through a cold sea and occasionally finding warm patches. It is a moral tale but without the depth of a tale convinced about its own morality.
"Paulo Coelho's books have had a life-enhancing impact on millions of people"
The Times