Eleven Minutes -- Book Review

I am a big fan of the book "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. I have also read "The Zahir" and it is also a great piece of work by Coelho. What is so impressive about Coelho's writing is his ability to reach to your heart through his impressive story and characterization. Be it Santiago (The Alchemist) or Esther (The Zahir), the characters in Coelho's work are people you can meet in your day to day life. This is one of the highlights of his narrating capabilities which make these characters very enduring to most of the readers.

The "Eleven Minutes" deviates from this theme as the story is about a prostitute who tries to find the meaning of her life and about herself through her journey. Maria is a girl from Brazil, who like everyone else, dreams about happy things happening to her. Life, as is the norm, does not play out the way we expect it to and this forces Maria to leave her country and head for Geneva. She 'allows' fate to take control of her life and soon she finds herself selling her body to earn her living. She also gets a chance to experience dark pleasures obtained through pain and suffering and when she gets to close to becoming a prey for the dark pleasures, she is rescued from that by Ralf Hart a handsome young painter. She discovers that sex becomes sacred when combined with love in the company of Hart. Whether she has the courage to 'live' her dream or whether she decides to run away from it when it comes knocking forms the rest of the plot.

This book might appear to have a negative tone and some might consider it depressing as well. The introduction of sadism and the vivid description does leave a bad but necessary impact on the mind. Thankfully, these are minor irritants for an otherwise impeccable book. The way the various incidents are narrated by Maria and their emotional significance by her loud thinking soul is a beauty in itself. The best part in the book nevertheless goes to Maria's diary entry at the end of each chapter. Insightful, deeply thought entries in her diary vividly describe the emotions that are going through Maria's mind at every stage in her life. The positive minded character of Ralf Hart and his interaction with Maria forms one of the most refreshing portions of the book. I have reproduced verbatim a paragraph from Maria's diary entry that describes about love.

"All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that's a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.

And the person who loves wholeheartedly feels free."

Bottom Line: The story being about a prostitute and the sexual references notwithstanding, this is a fabulous book about pursuing and living our dreams. The insightful description of the ways of the soul and the pursuance of a dream leaves the reader's with a lot of items to contemplate about the way they lead their life. The decision that I have made after reading this book is to get all the books of Paulo Coelho for my library. The minimum that a reader of this review can do is to grab a copy of this book and I can assure you that the book will leave you spellbound.