There’s Jacques and Marie, a French father disillusioned with life who wants his daughter to teach him about the deeper meaning of things there’s Rayan, leaving his small town Irish past to spend years in Nepal, and Mirthe, who is less convinced of her boyfriend’s idea to do so and there’s Michael, the driver, who received a Volkswagen as a graduation present leaving medical school, went on a road trip to South Africa, ended up helping victims of violence in Congo, and has been driving ever since. The bus as a setting is an intimate one, and Coelho works his magic in fitting in a whole cast of characters beyond himself and Karla. Barely acquainted, Karla convinces Paulo to join her, and the unlikely pair boards the Magic Bus: Paulo escaping a past of being committed to a mental institution by his parents and then surviving torture in prison at Ponta Grossa, and Karla from seducing a series of men that have fallen for her, but whom she cannot love. His plans are altered, however, and he only gets as far as the former centre, as he is spotted by Karla, a hippie beauty searching for peace, but also, and more pressingly, a reliable travel companion for her bus trip to Nepal. Paulo, a “skinny Brazilian with a goatee” – you cannot blame Coelho for vanity in describing himself – arrives in Europe to see the two centres of the hippie world of the 60s and 70s, Dam Square in Amsterdam and Piccadilly Circus in London. Paulo never makes it to Nepal, but before you scream ‘spoiler!’, that makes no difference, because what happens before then on the fabled hippie trail is life-changing.
It is a cliché, but as with so many journeys, it is not the destination but the getting there that matters. Hippie continues the spiritual search, this time departing on the fabled Magic Bus from Amsterdam towards Nepal, enlightenment and self-discovery. Coelho’s previous autobiographical novels are all set on journeys: The Pilgrimage describes the author’s spiritual awakening on his 500-mile hike to Santiago de Compostela, The Valkyries tells the story of his and his wife’s journey across the Mojave Desert, and Aleph sets out on another pilgrimage across Asia on the Trans-Siberian railway. Hippie is the newest addition to Coelho’s bibliography, but to say that it is something new from Coelho would be lying.
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