This novel tells the story of a pretty, young woman called Veronica who lives in the city of Liubijana in Eslovenia. Fed up with her
life, which to her is monotonous and routine, she
decides to commit
suicide on November 11, 1997 by taking four boxes of sleeping pills. She is convinced that living will add nothing worthwhile to her life, on the contrary, that the possibilities of suffering will increase as she will have to face old age, illness and the loss of her friends. Since she is a young woman with the habit of reading the news, she is aware that the
world is going from bad to worse and thinks there is nothing she can do about it and so plans her suicide. The suicide attempt fails and when she awakens she doesn''t find herself in another world as she believed would happen, but rather in the familiar and feared psychiatric institute created in 1991 in Eslovenia called Villete.
Doctor Igor informs her of her critical state of health warning that her heart has suffered irreparable damage and that she will inevitably die within days. The doctor is working on a thesis on vitriol, which according to him is the cause of bitterness. He believes that people, in their eagerness to create a world shielded from outside invasions, forget the internal side...from where bitterness arises and begins to cause damage. To Doctor Igor, Veronica is his opportunity to finish the thesis on vitriol since she is the first patient victim of vitriol poisoning. He sees to it that she becomes determined to hold on to life and thus overcome her poisoning. During her stay at Villete, Veronica meets different kinds of people who somehow influence her decision to re-examine her life. Zedka, who is her first friend at Villete, Mari, the one who will get Veronica to try and experiment things she has never felt before and Eduard, the one who will be able to convince her to cling to life since they share a love in silence that expresses itself through the eyes. While at Villete, she realizes that many of those who are residing there are not doing so against their will, but rather because they consider it the only place where none of their opinions, no matter how absurd, will be criticized. Veronica had given back Mari the will to leave Villete. Towards her last days there, Zedka is released. Mari asks to be released. As for Veronica, she decides to elope with Eduard, with whom she has fallen in love and plans to enjoy her last hours of life. She spends the night of her last day of life with him. However, when she awakens, she is still alive and discovers that her heart is cured and that she will not die yet. Doctor Igor finds out and is overly excited with the results of his experiment since Veronica has entirely eliminated the Vitriolo from her organism. The doctor''s thesis confirms that when we know that we are about to die is when we most cling to the idea of living. Through this novel Paulo Coelho poses the idea that throughout our existence we are constantly choosing between life and death. This story is for those authentic people who are not willing to follow the so-called "normal" path but instead search for different ways to fulfill their dreams and to escape from routine lives and thus are labeled "crazy" by those who choose to succumb to society''s impositions.
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