Name: The Devil and Miss Prym
Rating: 3.238636363636364 (44 reviews)
ISBN: 0060527994

Paulo Coelho

a novel of temptation

The Devil and Miss Prym

A Novel of Temptation (P.S.)

Edwin Lang

Paulo Coelho crafted a memorable, entertaining and very readable tale in The Devil and Miss Prym. The devil we know, and Chantal Prym, at 20, is the youngest resident of Viscos, a small farming village far from any major center, and a barmaid at the town’s hotel as well as sometimes prostitute using her body, her youth and good looks in the hope of escape, so far unsuccessful. One day she meets the Stranger who, in exchange for a great deal of gold that he has buried in plain sight in the forest, wants the townsfolk to kill someone, and all this within a week. So, rather than evil personified, the stranger offers hope to Miss Prym and ultimately to the rest of the townsfolk. The villain is not the Devil per se but a select group of powerful individuals in the town: a landowner, the mayor and his wife, the Hotel proprietress and Miss Prym’s boss and life-support as she was orphaned early in her life, the blacksmith and the parish priest. As a group they decide to take the stranger up on his offer, making among themselves a pact of silence and working on convincing the other 273 residents (i.e. take town’s total population of 281, subtracting these six as well as Miss Prym and 104 year-old Berta). The stranger’s rationale is simple. He lost his wife and children to a terrorist attack two years prior and seeks revenge on humankind, in this case in the small: will this little village decide to sacrifice one of their residents and neighbours for the good of the rest of them. For example, take old Berta, the widow, how much longer does she have anyways. Besides, she is likely a witch, the way she sits on her porch all day intently watching people passing by. As a storyteller, Coelho writes a simple masterful story, full of entertaining anecdotes; and as a moralist, every page seeps with some moral lesson: One such is who gets to Heaven (hint: don’t abandon your friends). Devils and angels are prominent in the struggle between good and evil. God is mentioned but seems absent from Coelho’s dramatic little tale. Sometimes Coelho seems to fudge the truth about things. Did Job actually curse and blaspheme God, when things got unbearable? (No, he cursed the day he was born). Did Jesus say that human nature was intrinsically evil and therefore only God was good, excluding even himself? (No, we are created in the image of God, and as Pope Francis in Laudato Si, quoting yet another Pope, puts it beautifully ‘We were conceived in the heart of God, and for this reason “each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary” (paragraph 65)’. The Devil and Miss Prym is an easy, compelling and satisfying read. Even though there is a fight between good and evil, with potentially dire consequences there is nothing here that stops the reader is their tracks. Most of the characters we have seen before in fiction and in real-life. The greedy landowner. The disillusioned priest. The power-hungry mayor. The ambitiously controlling mayor’s wife. The miserly and mean hotelier. Ok, admittedly we have not seen the blacksmith before and his presence is unexpected in a fairly modern tale. The book is in other words a great vacation read, say to the airport, at the airport while your spouse or partner is waddling off to get that 4 am Starbucks, on the plane, at the interminable delay on arrival, and on the bus to the, say, resort, then to the shared books bin for other vacationers to pick up and enjoy. You won’t though find a (or at least, my) copy of Stalingrad in that bin, ever. Edwin

neufassung des besuchs der alten dame (was coelho sogar selbst zugibt im Buch)

Josua Backmann

Hazal Özlem

İyi ile kötünün savaşını hem insanların arasında hem de insanın içinde görüyoruz Coelho ile. Kimin kazanacağı; neyi görüp ne duymak ve ne yapmak istediğimize bağlı.

Sunelle Chamberlain

I found this book fascinating. A simple story about the fight between good and bad. And I wondered what I would have done if I had been presented with the proposal the main character was given.

The Devil and Miss Prym a novel of temptation

Reviews

Highlights