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    The Witch of Portobello
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    The Witch of Portobello
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    The Witch of Portobello
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Witch of Portobello

    Written by Paulo Coelho

    Narrated by Rita Wolf

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    From one of the world's best loved storytellers, Paulo Coelho, comes a riveting novel tracing the mysterious life and disappearance of Athena dubbed ‘the Witch of Portobello’.

    The novel unravels Athena's mysterious beginnings, via an orphanage in Romania, to a childhood in Beirut. When war breaks out, her adoptive family move with her to London, where a dramatic turn of events occurs…

    Athena, who has been dubbed 'the Witch of Portobello' for her seeming powers of prophecy, disappears dramatically, leaving those who knew her to solve the mystery of her life and abrupt departure.

    Like The Alchemist, The Witch of Portobello is the kind of story that will transform the way readers think about love, passion, joy and sacrifice.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 5, 2009
    ISBN9780007311804
    Unavailable
    The Witch of Portobello
    Author

    Paulo Coelho

    Paulo Coelho is the author of The Alchemist, he was born in 1947 in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Being the author of 30 books that have sold over 320 million copies in 170 countries, he has become one of the most widely read authors in the world today. Paulo Coelho is the recipient of over 115 awards and honours, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Grinzane Cavour Book Award and the Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur, to name a few.

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    Reviews for The Witch of Portobello

    3.5/5

    783 ratings35 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Mother goddess.....feminine spiritualityI started this audio relatively unaware of the themes.To those interested in these philosophies,the book wouldprobably be enjoyable.Simply not my cup of tea.....But, made for a reasonable read
    • 3/5
      Cliche-ridden new ageism.
    • 5/5
      Every woman who has had a chance to read this book may imagine herself in the place of athena unintentionally.This is not a novel, it is a journal.
    • 4/5
      Not Coelho's best, but interesting enough :)
    • 3/5
      It took me a little while to figure out this novel, but it had me fascinated by the end.
    • 3/5


      Athena (self named) adopted daughter of a Lebanese family grows up in the united states. From an early age she becomes enchanted w/ spiritual mysticism and allows herself to become one with the spirits of possession; all the while manipulating the powers of the Spirits and everyone around her to do her ego based bidding..... Which of course leads her into stormy relationships and eventually inescapable trouble. Needless to say I didn't like her nor did I have empathy for her.

      Her life story is told from different povs of those who were entangled in her web.

      The book is richly written in a style evocative of the mystical & lush life of a "spiritualist".... A nice piece of literature that I did not care for, but makes me understand why so many others like his writing!
    • 3/5
      I think the author meant for this novel to be one of those big, important, spiritual books that changes the lives of the readers. Sadly, it doesn’t. It had the potential; a young woman gets in touch with her spiritual self and starts channeling the goddess Hagia Sophia. The back of the book says, in part, that the story will “transform the way readers think about love, passion, joy and sacrifice”. But it misses the mark. The Witch, Sherine Khalil (who takes the name Athena), is born to and abandoned by a Gypsy woman. She is then adopted by Christian parents in the Middle East, and eventually brought up partly in England. She gets jobs easily in spite of not being trained for them (including one that makes her very well off). She marries and has a child, then divorces the man. The church won’t allow her to take Holy Communion after her divorce, so she takes up her own spirituality. She stumbles into a group that seeks enlightenment through unrhythmic dance. She develops followers, everyone loves her, even a woman whose lover falls in love with Athena… and she values none of it except the child. She gives up pretty much everything, but it’s not sacrifice if she doesn’t value what she gives up- and it turns out in the end that she doesn’t give up as much as we think. I never get the feeling that she feels passion about much of anything. She just sort of wanders through life. She’s not afraid to try new things, and I admired that, but for the most part I just couldn’t understand her. The story is told through “interviews” with the various people in her life- her birth mother, her adoptive parents, her ex-husband, the journalist who falls in love with her, everyone who has been around at the important events of her life. This may be part of the problem with the book; we never get to know Athena’s thoughts and feelings directly. In a way, it made me think of the structure of the New Testament- we read a lot about Jesus but we never hear from him directly. Perhaps the author intended to make Athena the daughter of the great Goddess. But if she is, she’s a very stand off-ish deity. Coelho is one of those authors that I had heard great things about and so I was quite disappointed. I may still try reading ‘The Alchemist” since that’s supposed to be his best work, but can only give this book three stars.
    • 3/5
      I have been wanting to read a Paulo Coelho novel for some time. For one reason or the other I keep missing the opportunity to do so. All of his books look to be very interesting and I am absolutely open to hearing from anyone who has a favorite that I should give a try to. Perhaps that is why I am left with somewhat a mix sensation when it comes to The Witch Of Portobello. The prose and format of the novel are wonderful and strangely enough, it is the characters that I found so dislikable."...I did. A new witch hunt is starting to gain ground. This time the weapon isn't the red-hot iron, but irony and repression..." The Witch of Portobello was born a Romanian orphan of dubious descent. She was adopted by a well to do Beirut couple to be the daughter nature had denied them. They named her Sherine Khalil but the world would come to know her as Athena. As a child, Athena soon finds that she can see and feel the world around her differently than other children. She was prone to vague premonitions that seemed to come true. Her parents keep this secret and as she grows up they send her to an elite school, hoping the education will shape her. She becomes very spiritual and comes to believe that God wants her to have a child and become a mother, to replace the mother that had abandoned her. She convinces her boyfriend to marry against his and her families wishes. But that soon dissolves and at a young age she finds herself a divorced mother. What she was not prepared for was how this decision would impact her relationship with her church."...I like to imagine that, when she left the church, Athena met Jesus. Weeping and confused, she would have thrown herself into his arms, asking him to explain why she was being excluded just because of a piece of paper she'd signed, something of no importance on the spiritual plane, and which was of interest only to registry offices and the tax man. And looking at Athena, Jesus might have replied: "My child, I've been excluded too. It's a very long time since they've allowed me in there..." It is this exclusion that leads Athena on a quest. This exclusion from the church she holds so dear. A quest to fulfill her life and spirit. She finds that she reaches another level of consciousness when she dances. She begins to teach this dance to others but they do not feel all she feels. Yet she is still not satisfied. She searches for other spiritual people and learns from them. One thing she learns is that it is the blank spaces in her life that haunt her and the largest of these is the mother who abandoned her. What she finds is that she comes from a line of mystical women. Gypsies who have lived in Romania for centuries."...On the other hand, they think that by giving us some tricksy name, like "travelers" or "Roma," they can put right the many wrongs they've done us in the past. Why can't they just call us gypsies and put an end to all the stories that make us look as if we were cursed in the eyes of the world..." Here, by her mother's side, Athena is taught to tap into the spiritual awakening within her and it is this new spirituality that she brings home. A spirituality that is infectious and threatening to the religions that are entrenched in her town. Of her followers she asks a great deal and nothing at the same time. They find her vagueness wise. "...Simply being in her presence seemed to justify my very existence. Was that what she wanted to hear? Fine, I'd tell her over supper. I'd be capable of doing almost anything, even leaving the woman I was living with, but I drew the line, of course, at giving away my books..." Athena and the established powers come to a head in violence and the threat of losing her child from neglect. In finale, Athena is no more. The Witch of Portobello is a powerful novel of the growth and individuality of one person's spiritual ascension. For Athena, after her church cast her out, she found that in a Mother Earth religion of her own making. For many this may be a novel of a woman's right to choose her own life and the direction it takes. Shedding away the conventional and the bonds that society would have her labeled to be. I can see that. But for me I found the character of Athena, not to be strong and independent but instead, selfish and petulant. Several times through the course of the book, when challenges arose and things did not go easily her way; Athena reacted in a violent and angry manner. Often cursing those who would teach her and guide her along the way. Too often, she was less the spiritual Witch of Portobello and instead the spoiled little rich orphan child she had been raised to be. Those who told the tale along side of her made constant excuses for her behavior and blamed the world around her. There was the consistent abandonment of her child as she went off on her quest, or worse dragging him along as she searched only for her own needs. The Witch of Portobello is incredibly well written and I enjoyed the chapters being broken up and narrated by different characters in the book. The tone and tenor of the story being changed from chapter to chapter dependent upon the point of the view of the character telling it. I just found them so dislikable in their selfishness and blindness. There is so little growth in them. The opportunities for each of them to have found a special place for themselves on a spiritual plane was spoiled by their inability to see beyond themselves. I would still like to read Paulo Coelho. I found his writing and prose to be very enjoyable. Hopefully there is a character of his that will be to my liking.
    • 4/5
      Paulo's books just do something to me. Inspiring, entertaining and at times challenging, this book (as most of his do) caused me to see love in a different way. It's something I look forward to in each of his books, and it always happens at some point. Good stuff.
    • 5/5
      Coelho never ceases to amaze me.
    • 5/5
      Coelho is like an oracle for me...I read all of his books trying to extract the secret messages. I loved this one!!!
    • 4/5
      In the beginning of the novel, when the journalist says he wanted to write a biography, but also wanted to be true to the subject's life and so chose to use the interviews he conducted as they were given instead of paraphrasing, I was expecting something really different. I think the set up for how the book would be presented was okay, but the topic itself was just okay. The self-named Athena is a gypsy child given up for adoption and taken in by a couple from Lebanon, despite warnings from the caregiver at the orphanage. She grew up with a strong personality with an innate connection to the spiritual. Like many adopted children, she sought her birth mother and made her peace.Athena becomes a spiritualist, learning by teaching others how to connect to the divine. She develops a large following and many detractors and eventually goes into hiding to escape the drama.
    • 5/5
      I completely enjoyed this book. Recommend!!
    • 1/5
      sadly the author lost me during the first CD of the audio version. I was reminded of his book BRIDA. here as well I was not able to connect to the characters or the story. THis is jsut oo unreal for me.
    • 5/5
      Athena is many things to many people, a witch, a mystic, a bank worker, a dancer, a crazy woman, a mother, a gypsy ... The picture of Athena unfolds in this novel, told by the people who knew her, who hated her and loved her. It's a beautiful story, invoking the goddess and ripe with the potential of female power, both spiritual, magical, and mundane.
    • 1/5
      I have an "okay" and hate relationship with this book. I feel that it is hard to judge a book because of its narrative merit, when it's not much of a narrative to begin with. I did enjoy reading about the topic of the feminine side of God even though sometimes it was annoyingly vague "love will manifest itself how the Mother wants..." The parts I found incredibly boring were parts that I felt I was supposed to care about Athena. Athena was as distant to me as a woman I'm reading about in a newspaper. I had difficulty, therefore, "feeling" what she felt. To compensate, I imagined that the reason Athena was never fleshed out was because she was simply used as a medium, a vessel if you will, of knowledge that Coelho wanted to relay to his reader. He uses Athena and a somewhat, but not really, narrative form in order to accomplish this. So I was able to apply what I learned from the book to my life easier because I replaced Athena with me. In a way. Basically, the whole book was not much more than a motivational book with a spiritual side. I imagine this wasn't Coelho's intention at all, but it helped me pull through the book.The book had potential. I liked that Coelho wrote about the many different perspectives from many different characters. What I hated was that they all seemed to be the same perspective. I wanted to read about people who HATED Athena, or thought she was a psycho that needed to be committed. I wanted to read about Andrea being jealous of her, or her boss giving her a hard time. I didn't want the whole book to be so neat and tidy. I wanted to read about what goes on in the minds of real humans and I wanted to see real prejudices and biases. I'm not saying they should be encouraged, but that's real life--and these characters lacked that "realness." Coehlo would have had an excellent way of working through preconceived notions of others to arrive at something deeper and bigger behind the novel. Instead, I felt like I was more told about the "Mother" or else her power was forced on me. The book is either full of lectures or Athena's trances -- trances which I felt were pretty silly.All in all, I won't reserve a spot on my shelf to keep The Witch of Portobello.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the interview style used. I felt that each character was opening up and reminiscing in complete truthfulness about a woman who touched each differently. Each person viewed a portion of the whole. The end result is a complete picture of the imprint left by a unique young woman. The overall flow of the story felt peaceful. The memories did not feel rushed or overcrowded with unnecessary excitement. It was relaxing reading just before bed.
    • 4/5
      A story how woman find her way to go. She finds that everything is not ok! Like many other women have find. The story is told and it´s outside of the principal character, bur she is althoug the center of attention. She is groving on her way. This story of woman is a fiction but quite truth. This story is another way to find wicca as lifestyle. This woman is a bit older than Brida, but both turn to wicca. So when I read both books I have to read a book of Wicca, so that I understand what this stories are. The sotory is interesting and Coelho followes his way to write spiritual things. How to find the meaning of life is the subjekt in many of his books. The way he writes is very interesting and books are easy to read. I recommend this book to read.
    • 3/5
      This is another airport bookshop read. The blend of philosophy and story was interesting, though I wish there had been more story. Is it possible to write a good moral parable that's also a good story? This wasn't it.
    • 3/5
      A clever, fascinating novel
    • 3/5
      The Witch of Portobello started off strong. I enjoyed the exploration of the feminine side of God and religion and the thought that we all know the answers to our questions deep inside ourselves if we only listen. I like how the main character was described only through the voices of others and their direct quotations of her. Skillfully done. Unfortunately, I found the ending a let down, not from a religious point of view but from a plot fizzle point of view. Still, a good book, but no Aha moments like I had with Coelho's other book, The Alchemist. Three stars.
    • 3/5
      The Witch of Portobello is a biography of a woman in search of her identity and destiny... a woman constantly in a state of flux and motion, a whirling dervish on a path of enlightenment/self-destruction. This biography, however, is written as an interview with a number of people who came into contact with her during her journey. The story itself was interesting but the dialogue between Athena and her teachers became rather tedious with all of the new age/godess droning. As the story starts with a discussion about Athena's death, the story picks up momentum as the ending draws near, as the reader is left wondering whether the religious ferver she spawned would ultimately lead to her murder.
    • 3/5
      Hmm...tough one to review. This was my second novel of Paulo Coelho's (the first being The Alchemist), and they were very dissimilar from one another. In general, some of the descriptive words that I've seen to describe this book are accurate: pagan, new-age, mystic. It's a different kind of read for me, but it does make the reader examine his/her own personal beliefs & almost forces one to make somewhat of a judgment as to the plausibility of such things. Overall, not particularly my style of read as a stand-alone book. However. This will make a good book for a group discussion, I think, and I am looking forward to such a discussion at my upcoming book group meeting. The reader of the audio version of this (Rita Wolf) does an excellent job, by the way, with capturing the various characterizations and dialects.
    • 1/5
      Oh dear. Have you ever been in a bookshop with a three-for-two deal, found two books you wanted to read then struggled to find a third? The Witch of Portobello was very much my 'third' book. I'd heard the name Paul Coelho but not really taken much notice and thought this would be a good introduction. The back cover 'blurb' certainly sounded promising. In the event I came away from reading this book with the impression that I hadn't so much read a novel as been preached to about spirituality. Not recommended.
    • 3/5
      A good and average read. I am not really into Paganism but I still found the book quite interesting to read. Athena is a fascinating character to get to know.I like Paulo Coelhos style and I am eager to read "Veronica decides to die" soon.
    • 1/5
      This was my first book by Paulo Coelho and I got to say the book was such a dissapointment!! I was constantly waiting for the wow factor as well as something larger than life to happen. Propably the worst book I´ve ever read. Hopefully the Alchemist will be better:)
    • 2/5
      I normally really enjoy Paulo Coehlo books, but this one I just couldn't get into.
    • 3/5
      This is another airport bookshop read. The blend of philosophy and story was interesting, though I wish there had been more story. Is it possible to write a good moral parable that's also a good story? This wasn't it.
    • 3/5
      love the first 1/2, towards the end, it got a little too weird for me, however the final scene saved it for me.
    • 3/5
      i picked this up in an airport over the holidays - and it was the perfect book at the perfect time. at first i kept almost quitting the book - i was a little unsure - but i kept on reading till i got quite hooked in - it's the first book that i've read that i wanted to re-read even befor i finished it the first time-i lent it to my brother-in-law and will have to get it back from him soon.seems kinda corny and yet not at all