Jul 4
Eleven Minutes x Paulo Coelho Book Review
Hey y’all, happy 4th of July! I hope y’all out there being safe * lookin eyes. * As usual, I’m writing when I should be outside—but hey, I chose this nerd life.
Okay, so let’s get to it: I just finished this book, Eleven Minutes, by Paulo Coelho. He is the guy (lol novelist) from Brazil who also wrote the world-famous book, The Alchemist. I’ve never been one to follow authors, but I really like the way he ties in a biography to a greater purpose/soul contract. Coelho writes with a sense that respects and harmonizes with supernatural forces and a character’s intuition…and being that I’m a very “vibe-sensitive” person, I can get down with his style of writing
Anyway, the official thesis to this book states:
Eleven Minutes is the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. At a tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that “love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer. . . .” A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune.
Maria’s despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness—sexual pleasure for its own sake—or risking everything to find her own “inner light” and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.
—blasé, blasé.
Overall, I give this book 3 stars. I appreciated the youthfulness of Maria, but her thoughts were so far advanced beyond her age—almost the entire book. I would’ve appreciated seeing her innocence, her gullibility breaking as she moves through her days—in contrast to being a wisdomed 56 year old at 19. If Maria expressed more ethos, she would’ve showed the depth of how she arrived where she did. Overall, Coelho could’ve obsessed over Maria’s character more. He could’ve studied the dimensions of what it means to be, and feel, like a woman… since he wanted to write as one.
Anyhow, I was most attracted to this book for her revolving relationship towards love. I loved the way she made the executive decision to reject it. It was as if she was captured in a moment of saying, “I’m grown now, I make mature decisions,” while truly being naive and inadvertently immature. I love that Maria made the decision to temporarily live objectively—a conscious decision to become robotic. Even more so, I enjoyed her loneliness—more than the romance, and especially more than her commitment to adventure. I can deeply identify with the layers of a young and lonely woman; I can feel the hardened knowledge that was gained from rummaging in her thoughts all day. To me, this was the best quality of Maria’s character. Lastly, I was amused and surprised at the genuine friendship Maria and the librarian were able to keep. The foundational pieces of how these women understood each other were the complete opposite of who they thought themselves to be, creating a juxtaposition of a friendship. Both women thought of each other as innocent, and too fragile for the truth. And yet, there’s irony in how they still felt each other to be a confidant; this was enjoyable.
Though I enjoyed being taken on Maria’s journey, the ending of this book was extremely annoying. Like what happened?! Did Coelho just give up on the end of this book? He treated Maria like a complex and deeply reflective person throughout the entire book. Then he had the audacity give her this cliche proposal to a clearly unfinished relationship without any true incite as to how she would move forward. Initially, I was dangled by the cliff hanger, wondering what came of Maria and the painter. Ya know, being the exact reader Coelho wanted me to be. Then, I began to create my own endings and I realized how lazyyyyy he was with this ending. The problem wasn’t that Maria got the man, the problem was the undefined terms in which she got him. Would it be for just a few more hours? Did they decide to build a life together? WE DON’T KNOW (& not in a good way). If I were to write this book with the aim of a cliche, fairytale ending, then I would’ve given her everything. The painter would’ve offered to marry her and move to Brazil, where she could start her farm. She would’ve shitted on all her old friends who doubted her and her journey. Her parents would’ve been pleased, and the painter would’ve been fulfilled. I would’ve given Maria her once in a lifetime love AND the reality of her dreams. Why? because the universe is unimaginatively good. Because her cynicism deserved to be punished. Because life or love is never governed by what one can control. Coelho definitely did not do the reader justice with the ending of this book.
If you would like to read this book, order it. If you did read this book, let me know your thoughts.
Until next time, Au revoir!
***Here are my favorite quotes from this book. Feel very free to scroll past this section:
“[All men are afraid of women.] Perhaps not the women they married, but there’s always one woman who frightens them & forces them to submit to her caprices…even if it’s their own mother.”
“That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world—without owning it.”
“For the first time in many months, someone was looking at her not as an object, not even as a woman. But as something she could not even comprehend. He seen my soul…my fears, my fragility…my inability to deal with the world I pretend to master.”
“considering the way the world is—one happy day is almost a miracle.”
“Because I’m a woman. I am fragile.”
“He should understand the that the great aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love. Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves. We simply awaken it, but in order to do that, we need the other person.”
“The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.”
“We are allowing one of the most important things in life to die.”
“He should have saved me. I should have saved him. But he left me no choice.”
“Tonight I’ll play the part of a prostitute, or a friend, or understanding mother. Even though in my soul, I’m a daughter—in need of affection.”
“Do you want me as a professional? I want you however you want to be wanted.”
“The only thing that brings us any peace is being together.”
“What is real always finds a way of revealing itself.”
“Really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other. Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit. When we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meetings are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them from happening.”
“And then, our bodies learn to speak the language of the soul.”
“Humans beings weren’t made solely to go in search of wisdom, but also to plow the land…”
“one universe destroys the other”
“Desire is not what you see, but what you imagine.”
“the greatest pleasure isn’t sex, but passion”
“but if we are talking in terms of making progress in life, we must understand that ‘good enough’ is very different from ‘best’”
“suffering, if confronted without fear, is his passport to freedom.”
“When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.”
“I plunged into the depths of my soul & I know that I still want good things.”
“Why was is it, that in God’s whole world, men were only interested in showing her pain?”
“I also learned that pain has its limits. —That is salvation.”
“Pain & suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only joy—love.”
“I need to love. Life is too short or too long for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.”
“We are free in our mutual surrender.”
“A man is also a woman.”
“Everything that goes against nature, against our most intimate desires is normal in our eyes, even though it’s an aberration in God’s eyes.”
“All the things that turn love into slavery”
“We have to be careful what we take from a country, or from life.”
“You are a man—in the most beautiful intense sense of the word.”
“Absurd as it may seem, do you know what is more important than sex to a man? Sport. Because a man can understand another man’s body. We can see that sport is a dialogue between two bodies that understand each other.”
“Bless me.”
“Blessed be this woman who is loved much.”