For most of the story, Coelho abandons his beautifully spare, evocative prose in favor of overwrought sentences, returning to form only as the story nears its end. Unfortunately, this novel’s constrained Geneva setting lacks expansiveness, and what is personal quickly becomes plodding. ( The Fifth Mountain) or a young shepherd ( The Alchemist) traveling widely in pursuit of treasure. Coehlo’s best work is personal and expansive, whether it concerns a Jewish prophet in the ninth century B.C.E. Paul, King Solomon, Frankenstein, and Jekyll and Hyde. Her emotional nosedive includes an outrageous plan to win him over, and she ponderously dwells on John Calvin, St. From there, she initiates an erotic affair with a high school boyfriend even after her first come-on leads him to suggest she enter marriage counseling. After an interview subject reveals his thoughts about living a passionate life to buttoned-up Linda, a 30-something journalist, mother, and wife to a loving, wealthy husband, she begins to believe her own life is empty. In The Archer we meet Tetsuya, a man once famous for his prodigious gift with a bow and arrow but who has since retired from public life, and the boy who comes searching for him.The boy has many questions, and in answering them Tetsuya illustrates the way of the bow and the tenets of a meaningful life. Coelho’s disappointing new novel suffers from its lead character’s navel-gazing.
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