Honestly, I don't know if I like the book or hate it. Perhaps a bit of both. I've never been a Paulo Coelho fan, but I kept that bias aside when I read Adultery, primarily because I had last read one of his books more than 10 years ago. I guess my mind has opened up since then.
If somebody can transform Geneva into a world of gloom and despair, he's got to have talent. There's this loving (and may I add, rich) couple with perfect jobs, perfect children, in a perfect city...to sum it up, a perfect world. There's peace, beauty, and the best quality of life you can possibly imagine. And what does too much perfection lead to? Monotony, dullness, boredom, void, loneliness - to name a few. It makes me think that the biggest problem in life is not having a problem. Too much peace can lead to unrest. You can go on with your life like clockwork; for how long though? And then, one day, you start questioning your mundane existence. It isn't exactly purposeless (come one, you have a job, and you are a parent!), but you will seek out for "something else" at some point of time. Or in this case, "someone else".
It's kind of obvious what the book is about. The protagonist seeks for the missing spark in her life, and the title of the book suggests how she tries to find it, among other things. But it's not just adultery. Driven by her ego and inspired by fictional characters like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Victor Frankenstein's monster, she attempts to defame her lover's wife in vain. Even adultery doesn't seem like her ultimate liberation from the shackles of depression. The paragliding bit at the end of the story is probably the actual thing (what, really?). Once she's there and back, she starts looking at her same old life in a new light, though I wonder for how long. I'm skeptical about eternal happiness, and I think it's unnatural. Which means she'll probably have an affair again. And her husband will be okay with it...again. Not fair! Some marriages work that way I guess. Some times, one person is more committed than the other. It wouldn't be entirely fair to blame her either. There's no real solution to her problem. I know that some people don't even think of it as a problem (I can hear them say,"So she's bored with life; that doesn't give her the right to have an extramarital affair. These are nothing but First World problems!").
There's some hope at the end of the story, though the ramble about love being the key to everything in life is just too cheesy (and this comes from a true romantic). The only time I might've welled up a little was when her husband came to know of her affair and said that he understood. And yes, the paragliding part was beautifully described, strange as it may sound. Like most of his books, this one delves into the depths of the thoughts and philosophies that lay hidden in the minds of mortals. Although adultery is the central theme here and it does linger around, this book is more about deconstructing an aspect of the average human's psyche. An easy read, it's simple and complicated at the same time, and quite real.
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