This is one of the most famous book that I'd never read. 65 MILLION copies sold. It's extolled as a masterpiece by many brilliant people (and Will Smith).
A Fable about following your dreams!! I have a feeling that this review may show me to be somewhat cynical in my outlook.
A shepherd boy dreams of finding treasure near the pyramids. Twice.
He goes to see a gypsy woman to interpret his dream She tells him he's going to find treasure if he goes to the pyramids.
Well that was worth the one tenth of whatever treasure he finds that he agrees to pay her.
So he sets off on a quest to find his treasure, to follow his dreams. On his way he encounters hardships and... actually no he doesn't. Even the very few relatively minor setbacks he encounters are not actually setbacks but the next step he needs to take to follow his dream and find the treasure.
I know this story is an allegory from start to finish, and it's not meant as a rollicking adventure or action packed treasure hunt, but surely, some kind of narrative tension or drama somewhere down the line would have been nice. Knowing that it's all metaphor doesn't make a character sitting down and having indepth erm... heart to heart chats with his own heart any less silly.
The prose is occasionally very good, but often it feels like this book should have been printed on a soft-focus photograph of an inspirational lanscape and typeset in a dramatic, yet friendly, font. This felt like 150 pages of inspirational photo memes (without the photographs).
That's not to say I hated the book. I certainly didn't. It was a perfectly pleasant read. I could almost see why people of certain mindsets would view this as a classic.
Follow your dreams and you'll get there as long as you don't give up! That's the message that this book heaves at us for its full length. Everything the boy does drives his quest forward and gains him friends and riches.
People who've never really faced any hardship are bound to feel that message is a valid one. And the majority of names that are dropped in the author's introduction, and the reviews on the back are names from the priveleged set. If they met the shepherd boy before he was rich, I doubt they'd give him the time of day. Or is that my cynicism talking?
The biggest issue that this book has is that I feel it's my fault entirely for not thinking it's the true blue classic its painted as and nothing to do with the overblown proselytising and tweeness of the book's central theme.
5 out of 10. Available from all bookshops.
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