Amazon.co.uk Review
Paulo Coelho's astonishingly beautiful writing in
Eleven Minutes virtually guarantees it the cult status that
The Alchemist already enjoys. But what is the Paulo Coelho phenomenon? How can an author who (only a short time ago) was virtually unknown to most readers have taken the world of books by storm--and without the benefit of glitzy advertising? The answer is simple: quality. Such books as
The Fifth Mountain and
The Devil and Miss Prym are enough to explain a considerable following for the author, with their atmospheric prose and involving characters.
Eleven Minutes tells the story of young Maria living an innocent life in a Brazilian village and is played out in a measured fashion, but with all the author's brilliant scene-setting (very lush here) fully in place. But then Maria experiences love and suffers great pain. From this point, Coelho has us inexorably in his grip. Maria's disillusionment with love leads her to Geneva where she finally ends up selling her body (Coelho may offer us the beauty of life, but never at the expense of its harshness). Maria's approach to sex is complex--this is no mere revulsion arising from what she is now doing with her life. And then she meets a seductive young painter, who may or may not offer her a new path in life. But does she prefer to continue on the dark sexual odyssey she has embarked on, at the expense of real love?
There are echoes of DH Lawrence in Coelho's exploration of the sacred and spiritual aspects of sex and it's a brave author who tackles a subject that can so easily slip into strained seriousness. That never happens here, and Maria's journey is one that the reader willingly undertakes; the lesson she learns are lessons for the reader. --Barry Forshaw
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
PRAISE FOR ELEVEN MINUTES"Has a strange and potent chemistry of its own." The Observer"Coelho has a deceptively simple but elegant writing style which sits well with this strange but gripping tale." Glasgow Evening Times"Refreshing and insightful...an uplifting read." What's On In London"A simply-told fable for our times, highlighting the quest for personal spiritual enlightenment." Belfast TelegraphAwarded 4 stars in New Woman magazine review
The Brazilian Coelho, whose inspirational fables have sold about 50 million copies in 150 countries in 57 languages, at times persuades reviewers with his talent but often is seen as gucky and spiritually challenged. Here, he returns to a theme first picked up in By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1996), a tale in which sex and God are whipped into a tasty mayonnaise. Eleven Minutes, while reminding us that sex is sacred, is more persuasively written, perhaps because it feels taken from a real life. Coelho says his story was born when a prostitute named Maria (or Sonia) approached him and asked if he knew what it was like to live without love. The novel's Maria learns of sex through masturbation, first as a child and later as an adolescent. When she loses her virginity (at 16 or 17), she finds self-sex more satisfying and heavenly than intercourse, although she forces her deflowerer to return and make love to her several more times. Nope, solo's better-though loveless. At 19, she takes a job at a draper's shop, strings her lovelorn boss along for raises while putting him off from her bed. Love only makes you suffer, so forget it. A vacation on the beach in Rio leads to her being signed as a Samba dancer and flown to Geneva, where she dances in a family restaurant but is a prisoner, gets fired, gives her photo to model agencies, trusts in her own intelligence, charm and willpower, but in the end, guiltlessly, becomes a well-paid regular prostitute at Geneva's expensive Copacabana. But is she frigid-or will the artist Ralf Hart, as uninterested in sex as she, discover the eleven minutes she needs from the commencement of sex to orgasm (an idea Coelho adapts from Irving Wallace's The Seven Minutes)? Down-to-earth dialogue and detail about classy whoring: one of Coelho's strongest. (Kirkus Reviews)
See all Product Description
by Paulo Coelho
by Paulo Coelho
by Paulo Coelho
by Paulo Coelho
by Paulo Coelho
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home