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Eleven Minutes
Автор: Paulo Coelho и Margaret Jull Costa
Текст читает Derek Jacobi и Emilia Fox
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The new bestselling novel from international literary phenomenon Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist.‘Love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer…’So says Maria, a young Brazilian girl convinced from an early age that she will never find true love. A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, but the glittering life she hoped for was a fantasy. The reality – selling herself to survive – is a dehumanising grind that pushes her further away from real love, towards a fascination with pure physical pleasure.But when her emotional barriers are tested by a handsome young painter, she must choose between the dark path she is on and risking everything to find her ‘inner light’. Can she move beyond the meeting of minds or even souls – to a place where sex itself is sacred?A daring modern fable about the nature of love and sex.
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Eleven Minutes
Автор: Paulo Coelho и Margaret Jull Costa
Текст читает Derek Jacobi и Emilia Fox
Описание
The new bestselling novel from international literary phenomenon Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist.‘Love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer…’So says Maria, a young Brazilian girl convinced from an early age that she will never find true love. A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, but the glittering life she hoped for was a fantasy. The reality – selling herself to survive – is a dehumanising grind that pushes her further away from real love, towards a fascination with pure physical pleasure.But when her emotional barriers are tested by a handsome young painter, she must choose between the dark path she is on and risking everything to find her ‘inner light’. Can she move beyond the meeting of minds or even souls – to a place where sex itself is sacred?A daring modern fable about the nature of love and sex.
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3.5*** Maria is a young girl form a small Brazilian town. Her first love leaves her heartbroken and she becomes convinced that she is destined to never find true love. She works in a drapery firm, where she fends off her boss. On a trip to Rio de Janeiro she meets a “businessman” who promises her fame and fortune in Switzerland. Well this went in a direction I wasn’t expecting. Yes, of course, Maria winds up a prostitute and not a famous movie actress, but she comes to understand much about herself and the world. She starts going to the library and reads up on a wide variety of topics. She opens a bank account and saves for her eventual return to Brazil, where she plans to buy a farm for her parents. She explores her sexuality in ways she never expected and thinks long and hard about the meaning of love and whether it really exists. There were several times when I thought that Coelho really doesn’t know women at all. And still, I was captivated by Maria and her journey. I had previously read Coelho’s The Alchemist and was not enthralled. At the outset of this book I felt it might just be the author’s attempt to write the same book with a female protagonist. But the strength and beauty of Coelho’s writing carried me away. I was heading for a 4-star rating, but the fairy tale ending lost a half star for me.
Rating: 4
I loved it! I highly recommend this book to anybody!
Rating: 5
It's written in Paulo Coelho's way describing the world from first-person perspectives. Some of the areas, however, seems to be left incomplete.
Rating: 4
Very interesting story of a girl with romance sex and morality.
Rating: 5
This book is so intresting that i finished it on the first day, immideately after the alchemist. Paulo caulo you are a legend. Now next turn is the pilgrimage.
Rating: 5Paulo is a true legend of life in every aspect!
Rating: 5Just... Not for me. The medium that he used to tell the story is just a bit too raw.
Rating: 2
What a great book !! I’m in love you the story
Rating: 5
saw the glimpse of my life in it...glad i read it!!
Rating: 5Sexuality, a young rural woman in the city, references to the Camino of Santiago de Compostella - a very good book.
Rating: 4Derrick Jackerby's reading is fantastic. Which makes the novel a superb listen. Paulo Coelho has gotten into the psyche of the heroine very well. Can't wait for more of his books.
Rating: 5A couple of lessons on sexuality, life and growth. Also highlights how different people approach the topic of sex.
Rating: 4I enjoyed reading this. Very realistic, yet strangely inspiring.
Rating: 3I didn't enjoy this book, although I kept expecting it to get 'better'. Not that it had anything to do with the subject: i.e. prostitution and the protagonist's journey of 'self-discovery'. The tone of the book just seemed like a very long and drawn-out, and somewhat torturous (pardon the analogical lines) foreplay, with an slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am climatic, albeit 'happy' ending.
Rating: 2Paulo Coelho's first work that i read was the alchemist and i didnt understand that y d world went all ga-ga over paulo coelho's work. perhaps i was too young to understand the underlying meaning of the words.
but many years now, i read another of his work. normally it takes me a very short amount of time to finish off a book but dis one i took a long time to complete. coz in order to understand the true self of this book one has to sip it like a Bordeaux..to let the flavor set in.
i must say, it was a ponderous journey and an truly enlightening one.
Rating: 5but many years now, i read another of his work. normally it takes me a very short amount of time to finish off a book but dis one i took a long time to complete. coz in order to understand the true self of this book one has to sip it like a Bordeaux..to let the flavor set in.
i must say, it was a ponderous journey and an truly enlightening one.
This book broke my heart!! I didn't like it!!! And to think it's a true story is devastating!
Rating: 2I enjoyed the story. I’m guessing many others will and some few will not.
Rating: 5“Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?”Eleven Minutes tells the tale a young woman named Maria who leaves her home town in the Brazilian interior to go to Geneva, Switzerland, in search of adventure and love. She originally goes as a dancer but when this proves not to be what she had hoped for and instead pursues a career in prostitution in order to make enough money to return home. Whilst in Switzerland, Maria experiences pain, pleasure, and love and must decide the correct path for her life.Desire is a major theme throughout. Maria realises that she is different from her family and school friends and desires the to leave her own town and find adventure. She takes the first opportunity she has to visit Rio where she is spotted and given the chance to travel to Switzerland. Obviously sex is also a desire in particular by the men who pay for it but Maria also desires true love and eventually a family. Yet once in both Geneva she fails to really do anything other than wander around the city and work never leaving the city's environs suggesting that desire is more preferable to attainment.Initially I thought that this might be an expose of the white slavery trade but in the end read like a lot of moralising with a lengthy segment about the cliterous which seemed to add little to the story. Rather sections read like an extended soft-porn tale with little of the mystic qualities that the author's books are usually renowned for. Overall I found this disappointing but then perhaps it was just my male ego taking a hefty knock.
Rating: 2Again, too 'out there' for me. I really want to like Paulo Coelho's books after reading The Alchemist. Which one should I read?
Rating: 2I think I've just found my first book from Paulo Coelho which was a dissapointment. As a huge fan, I was expecting a wonderful story like The Alchemist, which kept me hooked the whole time.
Unfortunately, it's not the lack of interesting characters. Maria, a brazilian woman in Géneve had a lot of potential. It's just that this book makes me SO mad because it repeats to you facts over and over.
The story's beauty is stripped right out of it.
What a shame.
Rating: 2Unfortunately, it's not the lack of interesting characters. Maria, a brazilian woman in Géneve had a lot of potential. It's just that this book makes me SO mad because it repeats to you facts over and over.
The story's beauty is stripped right out of it.
What a shame.
Me gusto mucho un libro en el cual me senti muy abierta a leer sobre temas que nunca habia encontrado en ningun libro, Paulo Coelho sabe muy bien como describir los sentimientos y la naturaleza del ser humano en el. La historia muy buena, una realidad que muchas mujeres viven.
Rating: 4Fo Danica. I read this every year back to back with his other book Veronika decides to die (see review below this, you might like that one too) Thanks for reading. Hope this helps you buy the book. Paulo Coelho is one of my favorite author of our time. He writes beautiful prose, dramatic truths and brave visuals thru his scenes. He makes me contemplate on the things that I don't normally consider having strong views on. He challenges my reasoning and makes me do a double take on my opinions. 11 Minutes is my 2nd favorite from all his books. From the back cover of the book and from the blurbs I gathered from AMAZON.COM the book sounds like your typical erotic books that portrays a young girl that got mixed up with the world of prostitution thus comes graphic descriptions of sex. Nope, this book is more than that. The book is about the difference of Sex and Love. One girl's journey from innocence to understanding the real world will make you want ot read the book page after page until you sigh on how wonderful her story goes. I find the book overpowering due to the subject it presents. Especially the moral vindication and the metaphysics (inner being and the soul) approach on the subject.
Rating: 5Another angle on an old topic. Well written.
Rating: 3Well It was okay but based on this book I am not looking forward to read any more of this authors books if I am honest. I started to get really bored after a while and that sucked cause I did like the writing. Still have 2 books here by him but I think I will give them back to my mother.
Rating: 3It was basically a boring book. I don't think Coelho knows half as much about women as he thinks he does. I doubt that he has spent any time in Geneva except maybe the sex bars. (I lived there for three years, and would have liked a little familiar local colour.) It is also dangerous because it trivializes the very real hazards most women face when they are brought to Europe by strangers. Most of them don't have any choice about prostitution; most of them don't have legal status; most of them end up a year later with HIV, not with the money to go home and buy a farm.
Rating: 1From my blogI have had Eleven Minutes on my bookshelf for 2 years, one of the first books I brought after blogging. The main thing I can say about this book is that it was thought provoking. It was hard to decide what to rate this book, the beginning I was fascinated and as it went on I began losing interest but I enjoyed the ending of the journey and how it all came together with the understanding of the clever title Eleven Minutes. This book will not be for everyone, it is exploring sexuality with spirituality undertones and may make some feel uncomfortable.What I enjoyed about this book was that it was like reading a thesis paper, very literal with artfully contrived meanings but easy enough for you to understand and have your own opinion on. Maria was looking for adventure, to become a star, find a husband and be happy, we went on the journey along with her. I thought she gambled with her life, she took risks that many do when they are young but some of hers could have caused her her life.Now that I have experienced reading a memoir when I read different novels I realise if it was a memoir I would have enjoyed it more, this is in that category. The character was inspired by someone but Paulo Coelho still put his own interpretation on the choices and consequences.If you want a thought provoking but easy read I say go for it. This is the first book I have read that I can understand every rating, if someone DNF or rated it a 1 to 5 star, I get it but it has its place in the writing world for sure. It seems like Paulo Coelho very much has a style of writing, that may seem formula like but I think it is more like a personal research paper that he allows the reader to experience and think about also.Another favourite was the opening, I would like to share.Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria. Wait as 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 on foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss, let's keep that beginning........More favourite "thought provoking" quotesA writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. Page 53"Does a soldier go to war in order to kill the enemy? No, he goes in order to die for his country. Does a wife want to show her husband how happy she is? No, she wants him to see how devoted she is, how she suffers in order to make him happy. Does the husband go to work thinking he will find personal fulfillment there? No, he is giving his seat and tears for the good of the family. And so it goes on: sons give up their dreams to please their parents, parents give up their lives in order to please their children; pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only joy: love."
Rating: 4Another wonderful book by Paulo Coelho. This was such an interesting reading.
Rating: 4Eleven minutes is a wonderful book on the sacredness of sex. It is a mixture of love and sex and shows that sex is meaningless if it is unaccompanied by love. Love makes meaning to sex and the eleven minutes which takes a person to have sex will appear lifetime. Among the basic themes of the book also shows that pain should not accompany love. Love is free and should be a source of happiness. Finally Love is a powerful force and no matter what the plans of a person or ambitions nothing will stop love from changing a person's course in life.
Rating: 5For me, the best by so far of Coelho's novels. A moving story of a prostitute who is able to find redemption and light. Bravo
Rating: 4