Ridge’s deafness doesn’t impede their relationship or their music. She finds out after the fact that Ridge already has a long-distance girlfriend, Maggie-and that he's deaf. The two begin a songwriting partnership that grows into something more once Sydney dumps Hunter and decides to crash with Ridge and his two roommates while she gets back on her feet. While music student Sydney is watching her neighbor Ridge play guitar on his balcony across the courtyard, Ridge is watching Sydney’s boyfriend, Hunter, secretly make out with her best friend on her balcony.

Hoover is a master at writing scenes from dual perspectives. Sydney and Ridge make beautiful music together in a love triangle written by Hoover ( Losing Hope, 2013, etc.), with a link to a digital soundtrack by American Idol contestant Griffin Peterson. When they arrive for an extended stay in Istanbul, Karla and Paulo’s relationship becomes even more complicated, as she feels drawn to him in a way he can’t reciprocate.Ī nostalgic immersion in the mind-blowing 1960s. They all tend to behave as we imagine hippies are supposed to behave-they take drugs, skinny dip in a river, and show an interest in ecstatic experiences. There are 20 people on the bus, including a Frenchman and his daughter (occasionally mistaken for man and wife) as well as Rayan, a charismatic Irishman, and his stunning girlfriend, Mirthe. She’s at peace with solitude, and her dream involves “traveling to Nepal.to find a cave and remain there alone until her teeth fell out, her hair became white.” Meeting Paulo complicates both of their lives, however, for she would like him to be her travel companion on a bus trip from Amsterdam to Kathmandu, through Austria, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, and beyond. Karla is Dutch and a Protestant, and she yearns to see the world from a wider perspective. They meet, appropriately enough, in Dam Square, perhaps the hippie center of the cosmos. This character has linked up with Karla in Amsterdam in September 1970.

While the narrative is written in the third person, it doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to identify some aspects of a character named “Paulo” (also referred to as “the Brazilian”) with the author. The novel reads rather like a series of impressions clustered around a trip (no pun intended) through Europe and toward Kathmandu. Prolific Brazilian author Coelho is back with another novel, loosely based on his experiences growing up (a problematic phrase) in the psychedelic 1960s and '70s.

Hippie paulo coelho summary