Eleven Minutes

Just finished read Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelcho.

A young girl from a Brazilian village, Maria's first innocent brushes with love leave her heart-broken, convincing her at a tender age that "love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer." When a chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, she dreams of finding fame and fortune. Instead, she ends up working as a prostitute. Drifting farther and farther away from love, she develops a fascination with sex. But her despairing view of love will be put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter and must 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 a "sacred" sex in the context of love.

At first, it's a cliché story on how an innocent girl become a prostitute to earn money, just for the sake of survival, in their mind they can get fame and fortune easily in big city. But, Paulo told us story on how the character chooses this path in full conscious, because it is the only way to make money, fast. No heart or whatsoever, just making money out of it.

Paulo talks about the roles we play in society..needless to say Coelho was able to sugar coat/romanticize prostitution and come up with this erotic fable.

I love when the character starts to learn about life from everything she sees, the diary she wrote is the proof how smart she is in judging about herself as a woman, her clients, her profession and life in overall. But somehow I feel that this character is way too up there and out of reach.

But in overall, I enjoy reading this book, giving me different perspective about prostitute, prostitution, sex in the context of love or the other way around. It's not that I approved it, but I do believe we all have choice to make, life is about choices, and what ever choice you choose, you have to accept the consequences.