Eleven Minutes: A Novel (P.S.)

Eleven Minutes is the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that "love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer. . . ." A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune. Maria's despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness -- sexual pleasure for its own sake -- or risking everything to find her own "inner light" and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

The novel begins like a fairy tale - "Once upon a time, there was a prostitute named Maria" - and this opening sentence unfortunately sets a cold, impersonal tone that takes Coelho several chapters to overcome. Although the language retains this removed simplicity throughout, Maria's predicament gradually engages the reader as Maria takes a more active and personal role in the story. Maria, it is clear, is not an "average" prostitute - if there can be such a person - and her unique perspective forms the soul of ELEVEN MINUTES. Her ambition and curiosity distinguish her from not only her colleagues but from everyone else in Geneva.

At times the intellectual discussions of desire and love can get tedious, as Coelho is at his best in the midst of scenes and description, but overall this novel is a lively "fairy tale" with a prostitute as its unlikely heroine. As Coelho notes in his Afterword, the thematic thrust of the novel came to him well before the protagonist and her story, and it shows. Readers who want a strong story and intimate characterization should look elsewhere, since Maria's adventures and discoveries are carefully folded into the novel's concept. Others, though, will find Coelho's newest novel an intriguing exploration of not only those important eleven minutes but also everything that leads up to them.


Hard to put down.   May 31, 2004
Dave_42 (Australia)
21 out of 25 found this review helpful

"Eleven Minutes" is the first book I have read by Paulo Coelho. Although there were some things about it which I felt detracted from the overall experience, I ended up reading it in one day, which is about as high praise as you can give a book. This is a story which has been done before, where a young woman (Maria) leaves her home to seek fame and fortune and ends up on the streets. What this book does very well, is show the difference between sex and love, and the writing makes one want to follow the story all the way to the end.

There are some flaws though, some of which may be due to the translation. For one thing, the absence of drugs seems to be unrealistic, but perhaps that was the correct decision, because in this story sex is the drug that is being used. Another oddity that distracted me was how the narrative shifted from Maria's point-of-view to another character's for brief periods. Overall, these problems are small though, and this book is very interesting to read.


A study on the complexities of love   April 11, 2004
atmj (Rochester, NY USA)
19 out of 25 found this review helpful

Having not read any of Paulo Coelho's novel prior to this one, I cannot say whether it is typical or not. However, in the forward, he apologizes to some readers that have praised previous works, that this novel is not quite like the rest. Regardless, it is an excellent read.

Maria is a young introspective Brazilian woman, who also records in her diaries, her thoughts on the nature of the world from a very young age. Very young by not responding to a boy's request for a pencil, she felt she lost an opportunity for her eventual soul mate. She is a very young woman intent on fulfilling her destiny of one day being a wife and mother. As with many people, life often brings much different than what we have planned and it works out that Maria ends up going to Geneva, Switzerland to pursue fame and fortune. All the while Maria is living her life, she is noting what she experiences and sees and is trying to piece together how life and love work.

Unfortunately, her plans in Switzerland fall through and Maria is presented an opportunity quite unplanned for. She enters the world of prostitution. Maria quickly learns the rules of the game. In her diaries, she is concerned about the affect her profession is having on her perception of love. She theorizes that so many people put so much importance on a single act, so much fear, planning and importance, that when boiled down, the act is a mere 11 minutes. Hence the title of the book.

While working as a prostitute and justifying its separation of sex from love, Maria meets a artist that professes his disinterest in sex, in fact he says he is bored with it. Maria suspecting he is no different than the others, just using different lines, initially continues the friendship at a distance, all the while suspecting his motives. Her artist friend always comments on "her light" which he can said he could see upon their first meeting when he sketched her in a restaurant. Each time they meet their conversation is cloaked in much symbolism as the Road to Santiago and the significance of certain things. As time goes on Maria due to her association with the artist is drawn into some of the club she works for special clientele and explores a side of sex that she finds intriguing and is not exactly part of her theory as yet.

Without going further and ruining the story, Maria's running dialogue in her mind and in the diaries she writes shows and intelligent albeit superstitious young woman's way of dealing with the sex trade's disassociation of sex with love. Her thoughts and theories are intriguing and quite compelling. Her conversations with the older librarian she befriends and the young artist are interesting in both what is included and omitted from her conversation and the reasoning why. Also you are provided with some of the librarian's thoughts and feelings from an entirely different prospective. This was as revealing in a different sense.

Some might find the material a bit to risque, however, given the fact the story clearly is about a prostitute, this should not be surprising. In many ways it is more tame than some of the prime time TV shows.

I find the book compelling in the sense that it treats the subject as most people would when thinking about what to do, the moral justification, the concerns, the mysticism about the way to or not to act. There are milestones in a person's life and the character Maria clearly had a sense of when several were met in her life.

I would definitely read more from this writer.


Eternal Light   September 22, 2005
Arundhati (Pune, India)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

Paulo Coelho is famous for his international best sellers, the most popular being, "The Alchemist". Equally well-written is "Eleven Minutes" by the same author. It is the story of a young girl, Maria, brought up in a small Brazilian village, who has her own share of love and heartbreaks. At a tender age, she finds love, more a suffering than anything else.

The tricked Maria finally ends up working as a prostitute in Geneva. There, she slowly drifts further away from real love. Her refusal to accept love is tested when she meets a painter by chance, who sees in her the "inner light". The book is one of my all-time favourite because it deals with myriad of emotions very skilfully. It also treats the word "prostitute" a lot more tenderly than other books have done so far. It shares the belief that people need to shake off their prejudices to embrace that eternal light that is within us all. And it seems that love is one of the ways that we can achieve this goal.


Very Provocative   January 9, 2006
Katie (PA , USA)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

This is the second book I've read from this author, and I am quite stunned by how different "The Alchemist" is from this book, "Eleven Minutes". Yet, even with their many differences, there is still the similar thread of telling a story that will make the reader think about their own lives, their own beliefs & their own thoughts...

"Eleven Minutes" is, on the surface, a book about sex - and all the good and bad associated with it. However, if you're able to get through the more graphic parts with an open mind, you will find that this is more a book about love - and how we confuse sex & love - and how we no longer seem to be able to find the love in sex...

It is about one woman's journey from an innocent young girl who believed that she had squandered her only chance at love, to a young woman who chooses the life of prostitution, to a woman who, although still young, has decided to open her heart again to allow "real" love in.

Although I found this book to be really interesting, I have to point out that it's not for the "faint of heart", nor is it for people who believe that sex is a sin. In fact, I believe that the only way one can gain anything from this book is if they approach it with a totally open mind, and allow the author to take you along on this journey, and to help you learn what you will along the way...

An interesting side note is that this book is based on a true story.