Good versus Evil

Synopsis: The Devil and Miss Prym is the conclusion to the trilogy And on the Seventh Day which began with By the River Piedra, I Sat Down and Wept and the hugely popular Veronika Decides to Die. Each of the three books focuses on a week in the life of ordinary people faced with a major life-changing force; be it love, death or power, it is Coelho's firm belief that "the profoundest changes take place within a very reduced time frame"

Review: This was another choice from the 1001 Books YMRBYD list. I haven't read the others in the trilogy (infact I haven't read anything by Paulo before), but I don't think that was much of a problem because it seems that they are three completely seperate stories albeit linked by a common theme.

On the whole I enjoyed it, it's a story about good and evil, temptation and greed. Berta has spent fifteen years sitting outside her front door in the village of Viscos, one day she sees a stranger heading toward the village, but he is not alone, he's accompanied by the Devil.

The next day the stranger sets off to the mountains on the east side of the village, and in the surrounding forest he digs two holes not far from one another, in one he hides one gold bar and in the other he hides ten gold bars.

As he walks back to the village he see's a young woman, Miss Chantal Prym. He strikes up a conversation with her, she works at the bar of the hotel where he's staying. He tells her that the information that he gave on the form at the hotel is false, and tells her that he want's to show her something, she follows him (clearly she had never seen any of the 'Charley Says' public information films) back to the site where he hid the single gold bar. He tells her to dig, she does and uncovers the ingot. He takes her to the second site and gets her to dig again ... she uncovers the ten ingots.

Why is he showing her this? What does he want from her? He want's to put a proposition to her, he want's her to go back to the village and tell the villagers what she's seen and also tell them that he is willing to hand all the gold over to the inhabitants of Viscos on condition that they do something they would never dream of doing. That they break a commandment. That they commit a murder. He also tempts Chantal to steal the single ingot, thus breaking the comandment "thou shalt not steal".

Obviously this throws up all sort of problems for Chantal, she's exhausted thinking about it, she can't function properly. She tries to forget about her conversation with the stranger, she thinks about telling the priest. Her troubled mind veers from one solution to another, she procrastinates, she digs up the single gold bar and looks at it again. But then her hand is forced, the stranger hands her a note requesting a meeting, and Chantal, much stressed and with a gun pointing at her, ends up agreeing to speak to the villagers. It turns out that at one time the stranger believed in being a good man, and abiding by the law, but tragedy struck, and whilst trying to do the right thing, his whole world was destroyed. He has no compassion now, his heart is shrivelled, but he still has some questions that he needs answers to ..

'I want to know if, when Good and Evil are pitted against each other, there is a fraction of a second when Good might prevail'.

In the hotel bar that evening, Chantal bangs a fork against a wine glass and ask for silence .. she then repeats the strangers proposition to the villagers.The story from then on in of course is about how the villagers and Chantal respond to that proposition, will they be tempted or will justice and goodness prevail?.

I felt the first half of the book was more interesting and the second half fairly predictable. It was thought provoking ... how would we react if tempted?, would we always choose the right path?, have we all got a price? I did like his writing style and will look out for his other books.