Eleven Minutes: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

by Paulo Coelho (Author) "Once upon a time, there was prostitute called Maria..." (more)
Key Phrases: fruit juice cocktail, special client, Ralf Hart, Rue de Berne, Rio de Janeiro (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
"Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria"-thus begins Coelho's latest novel, a book that cannot decide whether it wants to be fairy tale or saga of sexual discovery, so ends up satisfying the demands of neither. In his dedication, bestselling Brazilian novelist Coelho (The Alchemist) tells readers that his book will deal with issues that are "harsh, difficult, shocking," but neither his tame forays into S&M nor his rather technical observations about female anatomy and the sad but hardly new fact that many women are dissatisfied with their sex lives will do much to shock American readers. In Maria, however, the author has created a strong, sensual young woman who grabs our sympathy from the first, as she suffers unrequited love as a child, learns a bit about sex as a teenager and, at 19, makes the ill-advised decision to leave Rio on a Swedish stranger's promise of fame and fortune. Maria's trials and triumphs-she goes from restaurant dancer to high-class prostitute-would make for an entertaining if rather prosaic novel, but Coelho, unfortunately, does not leave it there. Instead, he embarks on a philosophical exploration of sexual love, using Maria's increasingly ponderous and pseudo-philosophical diary entries as a means for expounding on the nature of sexual desire, passion and love. At the end, the story boils down to a rather predictable romance tarted up with a few sexy trappings.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From The Washington Post

Sacred sex. A paradoxical, utopian impossibility or a life- sustaining, attainable goal? This is the major question that underpins Paulo Coelho's new novel, Eleven Minutes, the tale of Maria, a naive young woman from Brazil who becomes a high-class prostitute in Switzerland. (The title of the book refers to the hypothetical average duration for an act of coitus.) And while Coelho comes down firmly in the end for the reality of a holy carnality, the path he takes to that affirmation acknowledges completely the snares and labyrinths awaiting any explorer of the fusion of body and soul.

The novel opens with a rather striking sentence: "Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria." Unfortunately, Coelho then feels the immediate need to break the fourth wall and address the reader about the propriety of yoking fairy-tale beginnings with the subject matter of profane love. One braces oneself for a continually intrusive authorial presence, consonant with Coelho's extra-literary reputation as a guru and New Age spokesperson, in the grand manner of Khalil Gibran. Much to Coelho's credit, however, this initial intrusion is anomalous. The rest of the narrative embeds itself firmly in Maria's perceptions and experiences, her emotions, dreams and struggles to understand life. By the end of the book, she fully owns her story, Coelho's talent and restraint having elevated her from the status of mere mouthpiece and symbol to that of uniquely individuated life force.

We meet Maria when she is still a young girl living in Brazil's unsophisticated interior. Maria's girlhood experiments with romance convince her that love is a delusion, or at least it is not for her. Attaining her majority, she becomes a shopgirl with limited prospects. But a vacation to Rio brings her into contact with a Swiss tourist looking to hire dancers for his club in Geneva. Here Coelho is delightfully ambiguous, letting us believe that Roger, the Swiss, may be a white slaver. But, no, he really does run a dance club, and Maria is soon hoofing it in Geneva. But after falling out with Roger, she drifts on her own initiative into life as a bar-girl. Quickly adapting to the coarse but not uninteresting role of prostitute, she endures nearly a year of service, until she has accumulated enough money to return to Brazil in style. At that point she meets a young artist, Ralf Hart, and begins to fall in love, disturbing her hard-won equilibrium and raising the issue of whether the two halves of her nature can be satisfied by any one man.

Coelho's prose -- at least in the fluid English translation by Margaret Jull Costa -- is limpid and unadorned, as easy to assimilate as water. (Of course, sometimes one wants wine instead, and Coelho's prose will not deliver such a kick.) This unornate language stands Coelho in good stead during the scenes of actual sex, of which there are surprisingly few, compared to the scenes of Maria thinking about sex and its mysteries. These explicit passages, especially the long-denied consummation between Ralf and Maria, are gratifyingly erotic and will not be earning Coelho any nominations for the Guardian's Bad Sex writing awards.

Coelho has spoken in interviews about producing manuscripts that are several times longer than the work ultimately published, and then stripping away everything viewed as extraneous. This practice results in books that read more as allegories than grittily mimetic renderings of life. (Contrast this book with William Vollman's similarly themed The Royal Family.) None of the characters other than Maria and, to some extent, Ralf (who, in light of his parallel worldly successes and troubles with wives, may be an avatar of Coelho himself), is any deeper than his functionality demands. For instance, Maria's best friend in Geneva is a female librarian known as "the librarian." Her main role is to deliver a lecture on clitoral orgasms. Likewise, Coelho sketches in the settings just enough to serve as backdrops to Maria's quest.

It can easily be argued that Coelho's first smash hit, The Alchemist (1993), set the template for Maria's story. The shepherd in that earlier novel is bent on living out his "Personal Legend" through a voyage of self-exploration, as is Maria. Both decry the failure to dream and the impossibility of living the dreams of others. The two characters even buck themselves up in near-identical terms. The shepherd: "He had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in search of his treasure." Maria: "I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure." Why, it turns out that Maria has even read a copy of what can only be The Alchemist! But while The Alchemist was almost asexual in its romance, this novel revels in the physicality of love and thus serves to complement the earlier book.

At times Maria's sacrifices on the altar of sex almost resemble the excruciations of the heroine of Lars von Trier's film "Breaking the Waves." But Coelho's basically optimistic and life-affirming temperament and his sense of humor (Maria's reaction to the librarian's sexually empowering lecture amounts to wishing the woman would just shut up) redeem the book from any such Nordic angst. By the time the fairy tale ending arrives, we feel that Maria has earned her rewards. And, per Coelho's mission, we are inspired to feel that so might we.

Reviewed by Paul Di Filippo

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (March 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060589280
• ISBN-13: 978-0060589288
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (88 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #14,973 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An exploration of sex, love, and desire, March 30, 2004

By	Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Eleven Minutes: A Novel (Paperback)

Paulo Coelho's title refers to what his protagonist Maria discovers about the sexual act: it takes only eleven minutes on average to complete and yet people are obsessed with it. The novel begins in Brazil, where young Maria suffers her first unrequited loves and determines that she will never bare her heart again. When an accidental meeting on a Rio beach offers Maria an Swiss adventure, she leaves her Brazilian life behind. Once in Geneva, she becomes a prostitute by night and a consumer of books and facts by day. What Maria learns as she explores both the darkest and the most mundane recesses of desire seems to confirm what she has believed all along, that eleven minutes of pleasure is hardly worth the effort. However, when she meets two extraordinarily different gentlemen who take her to unexpected places within herself, the truth of these eleven minutes is challenged.

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Provocative, January 9, 2006

By	Katie "book worm" (PA , USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Eleven Minutes : A Novel (Hardcover)

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reading Old Friends, June 16, 2004

By	Kate Westrich "Bibliophile" (Cincinnati, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Eleven Minutes: A Novel (Paperback)

I admit it - I don't like surprises. When I go to a restaurant, I always order the same thing. After all, if I know one thing is good, why try something else? Surprise parties? I hate them - they scare the crap out of me. Plot twists in movies? I think they're so rarely done well, they only annoy me.

So when I saw Paulo Coehlo's new book, Eleven Minutes, on the bookshelf, I knew I had to get it. After all, I adored the other book I had read by him, The Alchemist. I reveled in the idea of curling up on my couch with an old friend - how I equate reading books by authors I like.

Eleven Minutes is a book about sex. You can cut it other ways, but that's what it comes down to. The title itself refers to the length of time it takes to commit the act. The world we live in revolves around sex, no matter how much people try to disguise or argue that fact. Rather than dispute it or make sex ugly, Coehlo presents sex as a beautiful lesson to be mastered as one gains experience.

Maria is a prostitute from a small town in Brazil who gets convinced to move to Geneva, Switzerland, to become a stage sensation. Doing Brazilian dances at a sleazy bar does not bring the fame Maria wishes so she gets out of her contract and tries to fend for herself in Geneva. With no money and little knowledge of the language though, she ends up working as a prostitute.

While Maria's entrance into prostitution is probably pretty typical, she is not who one imagines when they think of a sex worker. She visits the library religiously and during downtimes at her workplace, she reads and takes notes on matters of psychiatry, love, sex and farm management. She learns to provide for her clients physical and mental needs. She saves her money and she has adventures while she bides her time until her return home to Brazil.

Coehlo makes an astute choice in having the main character in his book, which honors sex, be a prostitute. Through Maria we are able to see some of the ugliest sides of sex. But it is through her development as a character that we are able to appreciate the beauty of the act of sex.

In his celebration of sex and love, Coehlo is a success. Sadly though, in Eleven Minutes, Coehlo is a victim of his own style. In The Alchemist, a book worth anyone's time, he tells a good story that has a tendency at points to become preachy, but the story itself wins out and the novel is excellent. In Eleven Minutes, Coehlo seems unable to resist his tendency to preach and much of the book becomes his opinion - his take on how things are and should be.

I read the book Eleven Minutes quickly - I ate it up and when I had to take a break, I couldn't wait to start reading again. All said and done, though, I would rather curl up on my couch with The Alchemist, as it's a much more loyal friend.