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Title: After reading Piedra I lay down and slept
Review: After hearing so many good things about The Alchemist and other Coelho works, I was eager to pick up a copy of Piedra at a local used book store.... then I started reading it, and I got over the whole 'eager' thing. I found this book profoundly underwhelming, profoundly un-profound. Maybe something got lost in the translation; far from seeming 'resonant', the spare, sparse, bare-bones narration and dialogue just felt dull and ineffectual. So the writing style wasn't all that innovative or noteworthy; the characters were sketchy, and as a result, the plot's dramatic climax had no emotional impact. Again, the flat writing style made the book's outcome appear arbitrary - he leaves, he stays, who cares? The two characters probably should have skipped the religious lecture circuit and signed up at A.A. in the first place.
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