Rating: ***
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Lang:en
Summary
"The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the
gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin." So
begins
Memories of My Melancholy Whores, and it becomes
even more unlikely as the novel unfolds. This slim volume
contains the story of the sad life of an unnamed, only
slightly talented Colombian journalist and teacher, never
married, never in love, living in the crumbling family manse.
He calls Rosa Cabarcas, madame of the city's most successful
brothel, to seek her assistance. Rosa tells him his wish is
impossible--and then calls right back to say that she has
found the perfect girl. The protagonist says of himself: "I have never gone to bed
with a woman I didn't pay ... by the time I was fifty there
were 514 women with whom I had been at least once ... My
public life, on the other hand, was lacking in interest: both
parents dead, a bachelor without a future, a mediocre
journalist ... and a favorite of caricaturists because of my
exemplary ugliness." The girl is 14 and works all day in a factory attaching
buttons in order to provide for her family. Rosa gives her a
combination of bromide and valerian to drink to calm her
nerves, and when the prospective lover arrives, she is sound
asleep. Now the story really begins. The nonagenarian is not
a sex-starved adventurer; he is a tender voyeur. Throughout
his 90th year, he continues to meet the girl and watch her
sleep. He says, "This was something new for me. I was
ignorant of the arts of seduction and had always chosen my
brides for a night at random, more for their price than their
charms, and we had made love without love, half-dressed most
of the time and always in the dark, so we could imagine
ourselves as better than we were ... That night I discovered
the improbably pleasure of contemplating the body of a
sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the
obstacles of modesty." Márquez's style never falters throughout this
recounting of his life and his exploration of love, found at
an unexpected time and place. The erstwhile lover is still
capable of being surprised--and fulfilled. After an absence
of ten years, it is a treat to have another parable from the
master.
--Valerie Ryan
García Márquez's slim, reflective contribution
to the romance of the brothel, his first book-length fiction
in a decade, is narrated by perhaps the greatest connoisseur
ever of girls for hire. After a lifetime spent in the arms of
prostitutes (514 when he loses count at age 50), the unnamed
journalist protagonist decides that his gift to himself on
his 90th birthday will be a night with an adolescent virgin.
But age, followed by the unexpected blossoming of love,
disrupts his plans, and he finds himself wooing the allotted
14-year-old in silence for a year, sitting beside her as she
sleeps and contemplating a life idly spent. Flashes of
García Márquez's brilliant imagery—the
sleeping girl is "drenched in phosphorescent
perspiration"—illuminate the novella, and there are
striking insights into the euphoria that is the flip side of
the fear of death. The narrator's wit and charm, however, are
not enough to counterbalance the monotony of his aimlessness.
Though enough grace notes are struck to produce echoes of
eloquence, this flatness keeps the memories as melancholy as
the women themselves. 250,000 first printing.
Amazon.com Review
From Publishers Weekly
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