BOOK
REVIEW OF ADULTERY
It has been ages since
I last posted up a writing of my thoughts on my blog. Now the reason I want to
begin again is that I’ve recently been so keen on reading Paulo Coelho’s novels
which I find very fascinating, radical, provocative and compelling. Novels I
would always go to when I am in search of life lessons. Today is Wednesday 22th
of June, 5:16 in the morning and I haven’t slept a wink as I had the urge to
finish this novel called “Adultery” in three days. To start off this blog post
which is going to be about a book review I’ve just finished reading, I’d like
to highlight a word or the title of this novel which probably most people are already
familiar with as it happens in society or you could say in our own lives: “adultery”.
First thing that might occur to you is that it is closely linked to
destructively negative behaviour. However this book will take readers on a
journey through the spectrum of human emotion, as it has successfully taken me
there too. It’s basically about a woman who confronts her midlife malaise as
well as the consequences that her decisions lead to on her personal life and
self-esteem. Linda, the protagonist appears to have everything in life, a
devoted and doting husband, fun-loving children, a career as a respected
journalist and a beautiful home in Geneva. What else could be missing out? That
she feels crushingly alone and bored with the routine of her stable life. Then
her dissatisfaction spirals into negative things such as depression, repressed
feelings, thoughts of radical changes to exite her more. Until that one day she
happened to interview a guy and caught one of the sentences which led her to
ongoing bewilderment. “I haven’t the
slightest interest of being happy. I live life passionately which is dangerous,
because you never know what might happen next”.
Linda began to worry
everything since then. The more questions she attempts to answer the more they
come up and continuously remain unanswered. Her husband and her don’t make love
as often as they used to, she thinks whether her husband has already found
someone else, and she is unconciously responding to that? They never ever have
jealous spats. And yet she has absolutely no reason to suspect him. Isn’t that
absurd? Can it be all men in the world, she has married the only one who is
absolutely perfect. Her husband doesn’t drink, or go out at night, and he never
spends a day alone with his friends. The family is his entire life. But no
jealous spats? She begins to suspect that
the lack of jealousy means a complete lack of love on both sides. She feels
when she gets home and enters the enchanted realm of her domestic world,
everything seems marvelous, until everyone goes to bed and slowly the
nightmaters begin approaching her mind. “when
the night comes and no one is watching, I feel afraid of everything: life,
death, love or the lack of it, the fact that novelties quickly become habits”. Everyone
is happy apart from her in account for terrible thoughts and terrors she always
has at night. “I think about a marriage,
my marriage, in which jealousy plays no part. Because we women have a sixth
sense”. She then has the idea on reciprocarating. She’s sick and tired of
having such a happy, perfect life that can only be a sign of mental illness.
She always does the same boring routines each day, serving breakfast, driving
the kids to school, going to the office, collecting the kids from school, going
to the same restaurants and even ordering the same dishes. She doesn’t even
take any risks at all in that.
“Keeping the same fire burning after ten years of marriage seems a
complete impossibility to me”. She can no longer feel the same excitement
of her marriage as she ever did first time she was walking down the isle. There
are times when her life makes perfect sense, her life is a life everyone is
dreaming of having, that it is the role of human beings on earth. One morning,
she was neither feeling sad nor happy, everything seemed dull, she met a couple
of neighbours down the streets and they asked the same hateful boring
questions: 1) are you alright? 2) is
there anything wrong with your life? 3) what are you thinking of? “Nothing.
Only the nights that fill me with dread”, she replied.” She has been
thinking too much of terrors that might happen next, sort of worn out of having
no risks at all to take. Her life is not at all challenging. “Should I carry on living a life with
monotone plot? I want some adventerous journeys.” Then as if there were a
devil from one corner of her room ready to leap out and tell that what she
calls ‘happiness’ is merely a passing phase.
She keeps asking
herself and people around her the same thing “what are people looking for in
life?” “what is it that they are pursuing?”, then a man next door says “that’s easy enough, being able to pay their
bills, buying a house like yours or mine, having a garden full of trees, having
your children or grandchildren over for Sunday lunch. Travelling the world once
you have retired.”.
“Is that what people want from life, really?”
Her husband is
entirely focused on himself, his career, whilst she finds herself staring
foolishly at the past, as if she were still the adolescent who was the envy of
all other girls. She’s quite well-off, everything she needs always granted.
However years after years, the issues stay the same, the problems continue
unresolved. She hasn’t talked to anyone about the problems she has been dealing
with. She bottles everything up inside and thinks that no one will ever
understand, not even herself.
“I imagine that some
people spend years allowing the pressure to build up inside them without even
noticing, and that one day some tiny incident triggers a crisis.” Some commit
suicide, others get divorced, some go to poor parts of Africa, to try to save
the world, but she knows herself. She knows that her only reaction will be to
just repress her feelings until a cancer eating her up inside because she believes that many illnesses are the
result of repressed emotions.
When a friend from
the past comes back into her life, she becomes overwhelmed with impulses and
urges that have lain dormant for years. Seized by the desires of passionate
affair, she goes down a path that she never dreamt she would take. Her
ex-boyfriend from high school named Jacob, is a well-established man, a
politician and a married man to an assistant professor who since marriage has
been controlling his life. She then happens to be interviewing him assigned by
her office and there are more meetings head on after the first formal one. She
couldn’t stop thinking of him.
“You don’t even know that I’m thinking about you, I wish
I had someone with me tonight and tell me stories with happy endings, to sing a
song that would send me to sleep, but no, all I can think is you. I am losing
control. It’s been a week since I last saw you, but you’re still here.” said
Linda.
She does not know
what exactly it is that’s missing out in her life. “You don’t choose your life, it chooses you. There’s no point asking
why life has reserved certain joys and griefs, you just accept them and carry
on. We can’t choose our lives, but we can decide what to do with the joys and
griefs we are given.” She is
entirely sure that the interview with her ex-boyfriend is destined and will
lead her somewhere she desires. Ever since she met him, she couldn’t bear the
fact that she has been feeling much more alive, much more passionate about life.
Life is no longer flat and a bit more challenging. She’s ready to take any risks.
She will keep fighting to get a man she has a crush on even though she knows
the fact she’s married, and the man she is madly in love with is also married,
but she feels like breaking the rules, the walls, the boundaries, everything in
between. She finds it all thrilling and she has never for one second taken any
risks at all in life, this could be the starting point. “My love belongs to me and I’m free to oferr it to whomever I choose,
even if it is unrequited, I’m free to love anyone in the world. I can decide
who without asking anyone’s permissons. How many men have fallen in love with
me in the past, and not been loved in return? It’s a thrilling to fight for
love that’s entirely unrequited. It might not be much fun. It might leave
profound and lasting scars. But it’s interesting.”
She has been having
affairs with Jacob. When she gets back from the hotel from meeting Jacob, she
goes straight home and act a bit funny and unusual, that’s how the children
comment about their mum. She’s extremely terrified if she gets caught by her
husband, she starts to overthink many things but that is all concealed with
excitement she finds when she’s committing adultery. She couldn’t care less
whether she’s being used or she’s really found someone who can finally fill her
void.
“Everything we seek so enthusiastically, before we reach
adulthood – love, work, faith – turns into a burden too heavy to bear. There is
only one way to escape this: love. To love is to transfrom in slavery into freedom”.
She feels she’s finally escaped from a trap.
“I just wanna get out of a rut, find a better reason for
my boring unchallenging life. everyone has a dark side. Everyone wants to taste
of absolute power.”
Her jealousy of Mme
Konig, the wife of Jacob Konig, is immense. Because she thinks that Mme has
attained what she cannot, that is, Jacob’s love and attention. What she has
gain in life hasn’t yet satisfied her – she should get what she wants, with all
any attempts, she keeps fighting for the love she has for Jacob. She could no
longer think the disaster she is going to suffer in her family if she gets
caught committing adultery. She intends to get Mme konig in prison by putting
illegal drugs on her office table and report it to the local police, so she
will be free visiting Jacob anytime she wants to. Till she finds a little
fairytale magazine and spots this story:
“A mouse was always depressed because he was afraid of
cats. A great wizard took pity on him and turned him into a cat. Then he
started to be afraid of dogs. And so the wizard turned him into a dog. Then he
became to fear of tigers. Then the wizard turned him into a tiger. He was
afraid of hunters, the wizard turned him into a hunter. The wizard, saying:
nothing I do will help you, because you never understood your growth, you are
better being what you always were.”
She is that type of a
woman who either feels great or feels aweful. This time is the moment where she
has the guts to take risks and challenges in account for her monotonic, dull
and boring life of the same daily routine. First time, she feels she really
becomes the real version of herself “we
are not who we want to be. We are what society demands, we are what our parents
choose, we don’t want to disappoint anyone, we have a great need to be loved.
Gradually, the light of our dreams turns into the monsters of our nightmares.
They become things not done, possibilities not lived.” She’s still
bombarded by night terrors and nightmare. She goes searching for help by making
an appointment with three psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, none of them meets
her expectations. Until she meets the last one, his advice is to just let
herself get carried away by the night, she needs nothing more, seriously
nothing more than to let herself be carried away by the night.
“by doing something what you shouldn’t, you will realise
yourself” he said.
“thinking we are good or bad, fair or unfair, all that is
nonsense! So go ahead and let yourself go” the
man said advised.
She has tried to
contact Jacob through his private phone, but he seems to give her the cold
shoulder and humiliate her by his silence. His wife now really suspects that
something is going on between them two. She feels loneliness, apathy,
unsatisfied feelings, and negative emotions come approaching her again.
Eventhough the brain says all is well but the soul is lost, confused, does not
know why life is being so unfair to it. “it’s
loneliness, eventhough I’m surrounded by loved ones who care about me and want
only the best, it’s possible they try to help only becuse they feel the same
thing – loneliness –.”
“I wait for a pure
and virtous knight, in all his glory, to come defeat the monster inside me and
push it into the abyss for good, but that knight never comes.” “it does not
matter whether we win or lose, the important thing is to compete.”
She has come to the
point where she has learnt many unexpected things from commiting adultery and
now needs a bit of me time. “please leave
me alone, because I have no more tears to cry on or heart left to suffer, all I
have is insomnia, emptiness and apathy and if just ask yourself, you’re feeling
the same thing.”
She been thinking how
caring and loving her husband is, never for one second he hurts or treats her
not right. She loves him. She does not have a clue what is in her husband’s
mind, whether or not he has suspected anything she does behind him.
Now she is really
taking all the consequences, later she will tell him everything. If he forgives
her, she’d be pleased to start it all over again, if he doesn’t, separation is
the way and that’s the risk. “A dream is
always risky, for there is a price to pay.” She has no intention at all to
put her family at stake. To destroy everything that has been built up well for
over ten years long. She feels very stupid yet she must still take the risks.
“Then comes the moment you tried to avoid at all costs,
one that you had been putting for so long: the moment you decide to stay
together or to separate forever.
“I discovered that although I thought it was love, what I
am feeling now is merely a crush, destined to end at any moment.
“We are no longer one person, we have become two or many,
each completely different”
“Men cheat because it’s in their genetic code. A woman
does it because she doesn’t have enough dignity, in addition to handling over
her body, she always ends up handling over a bit of her heart. A true crime. A
theft. It’s worse than robbing a bank, because if one day she is discovered
(she always is), she will cause irreparable damage to the family.”
Now she’s very dreadful of what happens bad next.
Her husband turns out
that he knows everything she did, but he tries to act normally the best
possible way as his pure aim is just to let his wife carry on doing what she
feels like doing to find her happiness till she gives up and finds the truth. “He always believes everything I tell him.
Not because he’s a foo – but because he trusts me”. Deep down, she really
loves her husband for he has always been there for he. He has been the most
dotting partner ever. All this is proven by her saying “I know people who married for security, status, and money. Love was the
last thing on the list but I married for the sake of love itself.” I
believe that’s true as I grew up witnessing people go down the aisle just for
the sake of money, security, social status. Getting in for the wrong reasons
for marriage is, we’ve all heard that, a ticket to a quick divorce. Love itself
is the basic foundation of all relationships. However Linda doesn’t feel the
slightest bit guilty about what happened yesterday.
“What leads people to commit adultery?” – “if married
people, decide to look for another partner, for whatever reason, this does not
necessarily mean that the couple’s relationship is not doing well. Nor do I
believe that sex is the primary motive. It has more to do with boredom, with a
lack of passion for life, with a short age of challenges, it’s a combination
factors.”
People have a
tendency for self-destruction. Now affection and self-control become more
important.”have we reached the point
where risking our life is the only thing that frees us from boredom?” – “I will
never be capable of explaining what I feel, not even to myself, but what does
it matter? It’s the future and I’m not there yet. I am in the present”. Make
the most of it. “wisdom and experience
don’t change a man, time doesn’t change a man, the only thing that changes us
is love”. Spread love!
Because living is
loving – even love for a pet, a dog, a cat – for example – can justify the love
of a human being. If he no longer has this bond of love in his life, any reason
to keep on living also disappears. Let us first seek love, and everything else
will be added. Love the only thing that will remain when the human race died out.
Love. My eyes are welling up with tears of joy right now. No one can force
himself to love, nor can he force another person. All you can do is look at
love, fall in love with all and imitate it. There is no other way to achieve
love and there is no mystery about it. We love others, we love ourselves, we
love our enemies, and then we will never want anything in our lives. “those who
know how to love, love Truth, rejoice with Truth, and do not fear it because
sooner or later it redeems everything. May it always be clear that only true
love can compete with any othr love in this world. When we give everything,
there is nothing more to lose and then fear, jealousy, boredom, and monotomy
disappear. And all that remains is the light from a void that does not frighten
us but brings us closer to one another. The light that always changes, and that
is what makes it even more beautiful and full of surprises – not always those
we hope for, but those we can live with. To love is abundantly to live
abundantly. To love forever is to live forever. Perhaps the word “sincerety” is
not the best way to explain this characteristic of love but I can’t find any
other. I am not talking about sincerity that demeans those close to you. True
love does not consist of exposing weaknesses to others, but instead of being
unafraid to show when you need help and rejoicing in finding that things are
better than what others said.
“Learn to love
better!”
That should be our
goal in the world.
Cause life offers us
thousands of opportunities for learning.
And the most
important lesson is learning to love. Loving better and better.
