Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Selling your soul to the devil is not an unusual subject for a novel, but Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho offers a fresh approach to the age-old temptation story in The Devil and Miss Prym.
The novel is the final story in Coelho's And on the Seventh Day trilogy but is substantial enough to stand on its own.
Although Coelho's story line is intriguing -- the inhabitants of a village are offered a fortune in gold if they will murder one of their own -- the characters' stereotypical personalities detract from the highly provocative plot.
When a stranger arrives in the isolated village of Viscos, he encounters Chantal Prym, a barmaid who feels she has been cheated out of life's golden opportunities and has no way to change her future. For now, she flirts with the hotel bar's patrons to get bigger tips and sleeps with married men in the village.
The stranger -- his name is Carlos but is rarely referred to by his name -- wants Chantal to take his offer to the townspeople on his behalf. Though she wavers at first -- she wonders if she should steal the gold for herself and run away -- she presents the stranger's offer to the townsfolk, who take it under consideration.
Coelho doesn't let us get to know many of the townspeople well. But the ones he does embellish with personal details, such as the greedy, power-hungry mayor and the religiously uninspiring priest, are limp, overworn characters found in the works of lesser novelists.
What Coelho does well is present an allegory in pure and simple language in which his characters must prove to the stranger as well as the reader that humans are not, at their core, evil, but both good and evil, with the option of choosing between the two.
Temptation, at first, is what brings out the worst in people in The Devil and Miss Prym.
But if Coelho's intent is to spur contemplation of right and wrong, why do his characters not suffer the consequences for their actions?
Perhaps he thinks their guilty consciences are punishment enough, but this is hardly a realistic conclusion if we are to apply the story's lessons to our own lives.
The Devil and Miss Prym may not be the best of Coehlo's many best sellers -- he has sold 75 million books worldwide -- but it speaks to the choices we make every day in our increasingly violent world.
The Devil and Miss Prym
By Paulo Coelho
HarperCollins, 205 pp., $24.95
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
© Copyright 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
