BY THE RIVER PIEDRA I SAT DOWN AND WEPT.
Another wonderful
novel by the popular writer Paolo Coelho. This book has 210 pages and is
published by HarperCollins. The protagonist of the book is Pilar who lived in a
small town Soria, but went to Zaragoza after school. There she gets a letter
from her childhood friend who’s now a spiritual teacher, who could also perform
miracles. He had invited her for his lecture in Madrid. She meets her old childhood
sweetheart. Yes, shyness had prevented their adolescent love affair from
developing. But now, after 11 years, they were getting a second chance. “God always offers us a second chance in life.”
The book is in
the form of a diary entry from Saturday, December 4 to Friday, December 10,
1993. Pilar expressed her inner conflicts and confusions in these pages. How she
was moved by him is also evident in them. Together they travel and share their
knowledge.
There are many
excellent quotes in the book. Some of them which I liked the best:
“In fairy tales, the
princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the
pricesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.”
“Waiting is painful.
Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of
suffering.”
“To love is to lose control.”
“The moment we begin to seek
love, love begins to seek us. And to save us.”
“But love is much like a dam;
if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can
pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure and soon no one
will be able to control the force of the current.”
“Love is a trap. When it
appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.”
Throughout the
story I kept wondering about the title. Why did she weep? Is the ending tragic?
i found it out, but I won’t be a suspense spoiler. Flip the leaves to find out!
I was truly
dissolved in this book. Hope you have the same feeling while you read too!
T.Anagha Sivadas
IX C, S4399
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