150 of 157 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
No old man forgets where he has hidden his treasure . . ., October 26, 2005
"It is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things," Garcia Marquez writes in his first novel in ten years, "Though memory does not often fail with regard to things that are of real interest to us."
_Memories of my Melancholy Whores_ begins on the eve of the 90th birthday of the narrator, a journalist and columnist for a local newspaper. Feeling close to death, his birthday present to himself, which will (initially) cost him one month's wages, is a night in the arms of a virgin prostitute, in this case a fourteen-year-old girl he christens Delgadina.
He arrives at the brothel, where the girl has been drugged to calm her nerves. The narrator climbs into bed with her, and falls asleep. From here, he begins a year-long affair with a young woman that he has never spoken to, whose eyes he has never seen. He looks for her in the streets during the day, and then realizes that he would never recognize her awake or dressed. Yet, a change has come over him. Though his trists and the lavish gifts he has bestowed upon his Sleeping Beauty have made him destitute, and he is forgetting the names of his friends, for the first time in his life, he is in love, and happier than he has ever been.
This beautiful, perfectly-wrought novel tells the story of an old man who has never loved anyone, never had a true friend, who has never made love to a woman that he hasn't paid. It is at once a novel about finding love at old age, after a long life ill-spent, and about coming to terms with the ghosts of one's past. What seperates this novel from others that cover these well-worn themes is that it is also about the state of being old itself. We do not waste away with time, Garcia Marquez seems to be saying; time is a tool that carves away our excess, like a chisel chips away marble to reveal a work of art.
Time has been good in this way for the author, as well. The novella, which I have always felt was his best form, is carefully written, each sentence an equal part of the story. There are very few excesses, and because of this, the work reads very quickly. I often, when reading, had to force myself to slow down, so that I could really concentrate on the work, and when the book started to get really good, near the middle, I had to force myself to slow down again in order to catch the tiny nuances in the text that Garcia Marquez throws at the reader. It's a page turner, but if you blink, you'll miss some great humor and irony.
I really have tried to be critical of this work, but having loved Garcia Marquez for so long, I find it hard to find fault with any of his work. I'm sure that other reviewers will find aspects for critique, but I can't. I loved this book. I was moved to laughter and to tears, all in 128 pages, and that, to me, is the sign of a great novel. I think I'll go read it again.
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27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bittersweetness of living, December 2, 2005
Many of the reviewers here and elsewhere are repulsed by what they see as Gabo's endorsement in this novella of pedophiliac prostitution. But saying that "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is about sex is as absurd as saying that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is about architecture.
Love, death, and aging are the (characteristically Marquezian) themes of this book. The 90-year-old protagonist, looking back at his long life, discovers that he's never really quite lived, and that a wasted life is much more fearsome than death. He falls in love for the first time in all his years, and with a young girl who seems to be a symbol for lost youth and innocence in general. In cherishing her, the protagonist lives the bittersweet melancholy of aging, the memory of past joys, sadnesses, and lost opportunities, and the sheer ambiguity of existence.
Gabo's book isn't about sex, although it's intensely erotic. It's about what it means to live, and age, and remember, and to bring those memories into the present as living companions. It took Proust thousands of pages to explore "remembrances of things past." It takes Gabo just a bit more than one hundred pages in this haunting reflection on the human condition. Strongly recommended, especially to anyone over 50.
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33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
How to Be a Ho......, November 30, 2005
In a NYT magazine article several years back Marquez spoke of a lifelong fascination and devotion to two areas: prostitution and Fidel Castro. I admire Marquez the author: when I first read ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE in 1979 at the age of 20, the transformation was instant and complete: I would never again be able to accept the face or literal meaning of words and images.
This slim, yet satisfying book, is Marquez's elegy to a lifelong romantic attachment of an ideal form. However, as in most cases, the ideal has very little to do with reality. In today's sex trade children are often bought, sold and indentured to pimps. Violence becomes a normative experience while alcoholism, drug-addiction and illiteracy are common. Perhaps most sadly, children born to prostitutes will most likely end up as prostitutes themselves.
Marquez is not concerned with the reality. He wants us to identify with this profession, with the whole arena, as he believes it should be viewed: prostitutes act as surrogates, confidantes, friends, and lovers. The prostitutes are provided and cared for. Love is conditional on a price, but for a price, and always for a price That is as close to unconditional love as exists in Marquez's world.
Granted this work is slim, yet there is an essential life force at work that will not be denied. Now in his eighties, Marquez is simply running out of steam. However, the man is simply incapable of writing a poorly-constructed sentence. One note: Edith Grossman has been providing english-speaking readers with translations of latin american authors for as many years as I've been alive. This translatation is pure poetry. Without her artful channeling of an author's voice we would be denied the florid prose of Marquez, Amado, and many others. She is a true poet. Brava......
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