Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho

"Once upon a time, there was a prostitute named Maria"

Grabbed your attention didn’t I? :-D

Don’t blame yourself. It’s a perfectly normal reaction because that’s how Paulo’s novel entitled “Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho” grabbed mine as well :-) not one, but twice!

What a grand way to start a book about prostitution.

Why it is titled “Eleven Minutes”? Why not “Twelve Minutes” or “X Minutes”?

If the title bugs you as how it has bugged me, the explanation (as what our protagonist, Maria “discovered”) is that on average; it takes only ELEVEN minutes to complete the whole act of copulation and yet people are obsessed with it. Now you learnt something new eh? :-P so go ahead and time yourself... hehehe...

Now back to the book review :-)

Contrary to what you read in other review sites, this book is not “porn-ish” enough to be categorized as porn, nor lurid enough to be lumped together with “Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk”.

In this novel, our pretty heroine; Maria suffers from her first unrequited love and determines that she will never trust anyone with her heart again. A chance encounter on her trip to Rio promises her an opportunity to leave her Brazil homeland to an "adventurous trip" to Switzerland.
From thence onwards, our heroine was pushed into sleazy limelight; working first as dancer and then as prostitute by night and voracious book reader by day.

The difference between Maria and normal prostitutes (as depicted in the novel) is that Maria is constantly on the search for the “sacred sex” and not the “wham-bang-thank-you-maam” kind of experience.
She “endured” the job and accumulated enough money for her trip home only to defer her decision when she met 2 guys of different persona.
A painter named Ralf Hart; who lost interest in the sexual part of the relationship and on the lookout for “sacred sex” himself. And a guy simply named Terence; who drove Maria out from her usual sexual experience and embark on a dangerous ride towards pleasure of sadism and masochism.

So who does Maria chose in the end? Sacred sex or S&M? Read this review until the end if you wanna know the spoiler :-P

If I’m a naïve girl reading this book (this is only an assumption :-P), I might be convinced to try and seek out the “sexually filled self discovery journey” befitting Paulo’s theme in this book. Just joking :-D

In my opinion, plot of this novel does not deviate far from Paulo’s consistent theme derived from his hit-selling “The Alchemist”. Books by Paulo (at least the ones I’ve read) tend to favour the prospect of self discovery. In this case, "Eleven Minutes"; though packaged in the world of prostitution and sex, does not disappoint. The only plus point is that the reader gets to peek into a world rarely seen from the sexual workers’ point of view.

So after reading this book twice (as mentioned earlier), perhaps I can start to pen my own book which starts off with:

“Once upon a time, there was a gigolo named xxxx” :-P

Spoiler ahead:
So, who did Maria chose in the end?
Ralf Hart of course! Who would want to get tied up, candle wax dripped on their skin or spanked all the time :-D

P/s: Thanks to this “porn-ish” book, I went on to create a “mini-library” of my own with catalogues of books I’ve read and books I’ve reviewed. In fact, this is the only book that I read twice without realizing it (once in paperback, once in e-book).


Personal rating: 6 out of 10

Cons:
1) I think it sounded too Disney-like albeit with sexually charged promise of “living happily ever after”. So reader should be open-minded when they read this book.

Pros:
1) Insight into the world of prostitution