BOOK REVIEW – “Veronika Decides to Die” : A Soul-Shifter

– SUKANYA GHOSH

“You have all these kinds of books and then comes one which
changes a part of you altogether. Veronika Decides to Die is such a book.”

There are two names in the world of authors, whose writing, in the truest sense, strikes a chord
with me. They are Khaled Hosseini and Paulo Coelho: two men from completely varied cultural
and economic backgrounds, yet sharing an innate ability to find a place in the creases of your
heart with their stories. Today I’m going to talk about the latter, and his book, Veronika Decides
to Die.
You read books for fun, entertainment, to avoid boredom, to transport yourself away from your
reality, for insight, and what not. You have all these kinds of books and then comes one which
changes a part of you altogether. Veronika Decides to Die is such a book. The story revolves
around a young girl named Veronika and her unshakable desire to kill herself. She has no
heart-shattering backstory, no pitiable financial issues, no apparent history of abuse or
heartache. Yet, she wants and decides to die. As such, this is quite a bleak beginning, nothing
remarkable – almost as mundane and breathtakingly real as normal life and as a reader, you
may decide to give up the book right here. However, if you stick around for a couple more
pages, you get to dive into Veronika’s psyche and you see through her eyes how her pain
revolves around the absence of exceptional events in her life, not due to them. Her depression
is seeded in years of normality and dullness, in doing as she has been told and in leading a
constructed, ‘comfortable’ life. Soon, you find yourself in her shoes, because we have all felt it,
how our lives have no purpose. You soon after find the girl attempting to kill herself and you
see, how in the last moments of her life, she feels nothing. You’re left with a feeling of
emptiness.

“Soon, you find yourself in her shoes, because we have all felt it,
how our lives have no purpose.”

What happens afterwards is a gentle but mind-boggling journey of her waking up at a mental
hospital, making friends with ‘mad’ people, having just a week to be alive and in that time, falling
in love with a schizophrenic. The book is a lifetime squeezed into seven days and Veronika’s
journey to discovering just how much life can show you if you let yourself see. The stories and
plight of some of the characters who come in contact with Veronika are summarized but equally
powerful and soul-stirring. The relaxed narrative gives you a sense of living the life of the people
mentioned in the text. This, paired with the overlapping story arcs, doesn’t give away even a hint
of the glamorous ending that awaits you.
As you close the covers of the book, you are left with a thought that will remain afloat in your
musings for days, before it finally sinks in: the value of Life lies in the awareness of Death.
These words may mean nothing to you now, but if you do decide to read the book, they will
remain with you as a mantra and give you hope, as they have done for me. I will be honest, it
took me over a year to complete the book, because I read it in bits and pieces; but I’m glad
because I grew with the book, with every turning in the plot and I took my time to absorb each
emotion, and I made it till the end. In the bargain, I gained an experience, an experience that will
remain with me for life.

“…of her waking up at a mental
hospital, making friends with ‘mad’ people…”