By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by Paul Coelho
I was first pulled to By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by the title. To begin a book in a place of such pain, to title a book by its most excruciating scene, and to emphasize the loss of the main character felt to me a brave and intriguing choice. The book is of the romance genre, and yet, pain is so central a feature, both in the foretold grief of the title and in the characters’ pain, making it a raw, emotional read cut short only by the lack of character development.
The book opens with its titular sentence and expands to portray Pilar, the main character, in an enormous fit of loss, crying desperately for the loss of her love. Given this emotional, beautiful scene, Coelho then moves backwards in time, telling the story of the love itself. A strong tension is maintained via the reader’s knowledge of the outcome, Pilar’s constant fear of being left, and her love’s insistence that they can find happiness. As Pilar falls in love, the reader gets to know her love through her eyes and follows her on her journey discovering religious fulfillment within a sect of Catholicism in which the Virgin Mary and female figures are heavily emphasized. However, the beauty of the novel’s religious exploration and the hook at its beginning are not quite enough to make the novel a strong read. The reader, despite spending the entire novel in Pilar’s head, knows little about her or about what she really cares about, and her feelings are often in baffling, purposeless contradiction. Expanding this to the larger storyline, plot points and discussions between Pilar and her love often feel scattered and dropped in at random. In the end, the reader’s inability to fully connect with Pilar and her love cripples the story, making it feel much less real and intimate than it could be.
Overall, I would say By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept is a novel with a promising beginning and concept, albeit its potential is stifled by the lack of character development.
Reviewed by Teen Volunteer, 10/13/25.