This book is not playing with a full deck. 
 When Andrew was taking CCD classes to earn his First Communion, one of the things he was given was a dumbed down--and I mean severely dumbed down--booklet of the Gospels. It wasn't even an adaptation of one of the Gospels in particular; it was a crude hodgepodge of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. (It mostly ignored John, though, whose Gospel account is too different from the others to reconcile into the mix.) If an adult were to read any part of this mishmash, he would notice right away how juvenile is the manner in which the stories are recounted. And I think for the most part it's understandable: kids this age (usually around 7 or 8 years old) are too young to grasp complex concepts like transubstantiation or the mystery of the Trinity. But the message itself gets through, and I think whoever assembled the booklet probably felt that the message--rather than the specifics--is what was important. Well, reading The Alchemist was, I have to say, a lot like reading one of these infantile booklets. 
 Believe it or not, I read The Alchemist because of Evan's review. I like that he compares the loathing people have for it to the loathing of what he considers to be other easy targets, like Celine Dion. (I also like that he was drunk when he wrote it.) But even though nobody in his right mind would ever admit to liking Celine Dion, at least she has an objectively decent voice. This book, on the other hand, has few redeeming qualities, if any. It contains a painfully simplistic story told with painfully cliched catch phrases repeated ad nauseam, phrases like "listen to your heart; it will guide you" and "when you want something badly enough, the universe will conspire to help you" and "you can do anything you put your mind to." Ugh, that one is just the worst. No, you can't do anything you put your mind to. That is stupid. Please stop teaching people that. 
 Anwyay, I think the derision this book receives is mostly on account of its peurile philosophizing and that it (possibly) purports itself to be something greater than it is. I can't speak to whether or not the book really feels this way about itself but if it does I can understand the hatred because fuck you, book, you're not that great. For me, though, I see this book as mostly a few bricks short of a load, not the sharpest tool in the shed, and by far not the brightest bulb in the box. But it tries. And it's hard to hate something as eager as this book appears to be, regardless of how fundamentally loose some of its screws are.