ŷ������

**3.5 stars**

"At that moment, Maria learned that certain things are lost forever. She learned too that there was a place called “somewhere far away,�� that the world was vast and her own town very small, and that, in the end, the most interesting people always leave."

You know what the titular eleven minutes imply right? **awkward hypocritic giggle**

This was my first ever book swap, on a train journey across the length of India. The woman I borrowed it from, had always considered Harry Potter as children’s stuff before borrowing my battered copy�� anyway though I had an awful lot of time I didn’t quite manage to read this one as I like to, and so had to lend a used copy from a thrift store when I was back home.

It's popular enough to relate the plot in here; anyway in brief it will look something like this: An adolescent woman in the midway of discovering all sorts of bodily pleasure finds herself stranded in a faraway city with no money to bring her back home and hence she begins in there her“d������" days as an escort…until one day she finds love, and on and on.

Told compactly enough with a rarely shifting narrative unless we “need�� to take a peek in Maria’s journals, the story can be described as insightful and melancholic with some unique-back-then-but-not-now thoughts. Moreover, it does begin with one of the most memorable lines I have ever encountered at that age back then:

“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 other in the abyss, let’s keep that beginning. ��

Not without its downsides, though. Too many pages have been devoted to sex, more than to the extent where it can simply fall under the erotica genre, which it isn’t, obviously. It’s far too deep than the likes of that genre , yet a bit wearisome. I get it, it’s her life story, and undoubtedly the seductive part plays the foremost role. But when you’re telling someone’s life-story, her job doesn’t speak the whole of it. It does feel like everything, especially the helplessness of a lost girl does get lost while the author puts an emphasis on the kinky stuff, probably to make it reader-friendly for all groups of people, especially teenagers, many of whom I know personally to regard it in the same way as Mills and Boons.

I don't know. I didn't feel transformed after reading this work, even after the glamorous writing style. I had to hide it from my elders' inquisitive glances the first time, but the second time also didn't help much. As this has become a genre of its own, with masterful works both in movies and literature. Good for a one-time, but not good enough for one who wants to pick up Coelho's best. Or so I feel.

"Life moves very fast. It rushes us from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds."