Eleven Minutes, by Paulo Coelho

Until I started on this, my knowledge of Paulo Coelho had been restricted to "The Alchemist" and "Diary of a Magus" (later renamed as "The Pilgrimage"), the first of which I liked a lot, though the second left me unimpressed and, actually, very disappointed. "Eleven Minutes" was, unfortunately, another disappointment for me. I found it preachy, commonplace, predictable, and contrived. If the author aimed to enlight the reader with any fundamental universal truth, he failed miserably.

The story is somewhat interesting when it starts out, but it loses its charm very fast. In the end, I felt that the time I spent on this book was completely wasted. The story speaks of a woman born in the poor countryside of northeastern Brazil. On a trip to see Rio de Janeiro, she is made a strange proposition to become a dancer in Switzerland and there she goes. Once she discovers that she had been conned into a indentured scam, she attempts to change her life around and become a model. Her first gig with the modeling agency puts her in touch with someone who proposes paying 1,000 Swiss francs for a night in bed with her.

Up to that point, I found the story somewhat engaging. Beyond that, however, it loses touch with reality and goes into the realm of heavy handed preaching platitudes that can be found in the cheapest self-help book. Maria, the protagonist, who had very little education, starts to conconct entries for her diary that sound far too intelectualized for her level of schooling. It only gets worse from there. The final pages put rotten icing on an already bad cake by legitimizing the story as a romantic fairy tale.

Don't get caught into reading this drivel. There's nothing revealing or enlightening in Coelho's discussion of love and sacred sex. There's nothing remotely interesing in this novel's forays into the dangers of S&M. There's nothing worse than spending time with a book that has such little value. I'm done ranting now.