Why Paulo Coelho fails to do justice to Mata Hari's story in The Spy

Right at the outset, let me admit that I am no fan of Paulo Coelho. I have never spent money to buy any of his aphorism-heavy books wallowing in shallow pop philosophy (“No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream”) and have no intention of doing so in this life.

So I was mildly surprised when I found that The Spy is a biography of sorts of Mata Hari, the Dutch courtesan who was executed by the French during World War I for being a German spy. This is not Coelho’s usual territory and I was interested in knowing what he had wrought.

History is unsure about whether Mata Hari (real name Margarethe Zelle) was actually a spy or not. The prosecutors at her trial could not produce any hard evidence, but France was at war, and perhaps she was sentenced to death as good PR. Whatever the case, the execution ensured that she remains the stuff of legend, and the subject of endless speculation and countless books and films, including one starring the equally legendary Greta Garbo.

Margarethe married a Dutch army officer 20 years older than her after answering his newspaper advertisement, but he turned out to be an alcoholic and an abusive husband, beating her regularly. She fled to Paris and re-invented herself as a dancer.

Popularity and fame came immediately, because she would perform a complete striptease in upmarket venues, which must have both shocked and thrilled her audience. She added to her sensuality by pretending to be Indonesian (she had spent her married life in Java) — ah, that Eastern mystique! — and rich Frenchmen fell for her, hook line and sinker.

“When I got to the sixth veil, I went over to the Shiva statue, simulated an orgasm, and cast myself to the ground while removing the seventh and final veil.”

Much of The Spy is a letter written by Mata Hari while on death row to her lawyer; the rest is a letter written to her by her lawyer. Mata Hari’s letter is an attempt at an autobiography, and I must say, in spite of Coelho’s best intentions and efforts, it evoked hardly any sympathy from me.

Coelho tries to portray her as an early feminist, but the picture we get is that of a rather dim-witted woman with very expensive tastes who would go to any length to buy her next fur coat.

Of course, there are the usual Coelho-isms. “When we don’t know where life is taking us, we are never lost.” “The true sin is living so far removed from absolute harmony.” “I am the nightingale who gave everything and died while doing so.” And so on and on.

But Coelho does not tell us why she left her infant daughter with her husband, who would clearly be a very bad father, or why she would go to any length to buy that next fur coat. Surely, feminism is not about self-centredness and conspicuous consumption.

The truth is that after Mata Hari’s few spectacular years in Paris as a striptease artist, many imitators appeared, and she also put on weight (the photographs in the book show a woman in her early middle age, overweight and looking quite wasted). Her rich lovers lost interest, and to support her outrageously expensive lifestyle, she may have signed on with both the French and German espionage agencies.

In the end, she was just a greedy and not very smart woman caught in a wartime situation that was totally beyond her comprehension and limited intelligence.

This is not to so that she was not a victim. The French needed a celebrity trial and that is what they carried out. But Coelho does not have the literary skills to make us weep — in fact, feel anything — for Mata Hari.

In fact, for all the writer’s enthusiasm, the takeaway for many readers will be: She bloody deserved it. Coelho should stick to his vaguely philosophical fables.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

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