Eleven Minutes

I once dismissed Paolo Coelho's writing as self-help exhortations thinly disguised as literature. The Alchemist was too much like The Little Prince, but longer and less endearing. But Veronika Decides to Die, at the time I read it as a college student, was a good corrective to the self-centered depression and vitriol that sets in at that time of life. Last month, I read Eleven Minutes, ostensibly an exploration of sex, but really more about love.

Coelho writes about Maria, a prostitute who finds love in an occupation where people go through the motions of, but almost never succeed at making love. She learns that love is about giving unselfishly. Coelho reminds readers true love is given by one whose cup is overflowing, not one whose personal shortcomings need to be compensated by someone else. He writes about the reunion of two beings that were once together as one body as Plato described it in the Symposium - as people talk today of soul mates.

So if Coelho manages to convey eternal truths garbed in feel good novels millions have already bought, what good is there in being a literary snob about it?