I read my last London freesheet on 17 March, finished the sudoku and switched to reading books. The freesheets take less than six stops to read and do both puzzles, and then litter the tube. Not a good use of trees.
So last night I finished Eleven Minutes
It was patchy. Intriguing for the first half, dipping for the latter but ultimately rescuing itself in the last few pages, it’s the story of Maria, a Brazilian prostitute lured to Switzerland who discovers that love and sex are more meaningful than she thought. In a nutshell.
It’s simply written, like Coelho’s other books, isn’t too taxing and is quick to read. I like the way he plays with the craft of writing, doing little to hide the fact that what you are reading is anything more an a figment of his imagination. When he drops you into excerpts from Maria’s diary he does it with a quick ‘From Maria’s diary later that night…’, rather than trying to smooth the transition from third- to first- person.
He sets out his stall right from the off, making it clear from the start that this is, at heart, a simple fairy tale. From page one:
Once upon a time. there was a prostitute called Maria. Wait a minute. ‘Once upon a time’ is how all the best children’s stories begin and ‘prostitute’ is a word for adults. How can I start a book with this apparent contradiction? But since, at every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss, let’s keep that beginning.
And later, a reminder that this is just a story in a book…
…lovely dark girl with her pale eyes and hair as black as the wing of the grauna (the Brazilian bird often evoked by local authors to describe black hair)…
There are references to The Alchemist when he mentions that his main character reads a book about a boy who tends sheep in Spain, and to The Pilgrimage, as Maria walks a small part of the road to Santiago.
It’s certainly not the best of his books I’ve read so far, and nothing has yet trumped The Pilgrimage, but with eight or so to go, it’ll be interesting to see where it sits in the collection, particularly as he admits in the introduction that he was nervous about publishing this one. I think I can see why.
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Tags: book, paulo coelho, review
Thoroughly enjoyed it!