Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Vintage International)

I am new to Gabriel Garcia Marquez's work, but having read and enjoyed "Love in the Time of Cholera", I wanted more. My family is Colombian, and the way Marquez describes the scenery and everything around the main character, I can actually picture it, as well as understand the cultural nuances. This story is a nameless older man, who having never married, decides to spend his ninetieth birthday with a virgin. Instead of enjoying the carnal pleasure, he finds her asleep, and is enamored of how young and beautiful she is. He begins to make a habit of going to the brothel just to watch her sleep. As time passes, he comes to fall in love with this girl that he's never met, but has only watched sleep. His curmudgeon ways change, and he comes to love life, and realize what a better place the world is when you have love. A great read.

Márquez is a member of the upper echelon of serious writers; have you read many books better than 100 Years of Solitude? Nonetheless, sometimes you may not be up for a 200 character, 10 generation epic. No? This 115 page gem is like the Splenda version of Márquez, all the flavor, easier to handle. On the eve of his 90th birthday, a lifelong bachelor, utterly alone in the decaying house of his long dead parents, connected to the world only by the Sunday column he is still allowed to write for the local newspaper, feels the strong need for one more adventure; a wild night with a young virgin. After some trouble, it is arranged but presented with the peaceful sleep of the girl that has been carefully selected for him, he merely watches her and thus begins to grow the love that in his 90 years he has never known. Though his meager finances can barely afford it, the need to see her grows, as does his love for her, exponentially. Like a teenager in love for the first time, he can't sleep, loses weight, can only think of their next meeting when he'll be able so see her sleep, her body providing answers to the questions he thinks but doesn't vocalize. This impossible, but vital love affair sustains him for another year and through it the twists and turns of love makes him see what he never did; at the age of 90 he becomes a new man, love opening his eyes before they close forever. Some quotes: "I have never gone to bed with a woman I didn't pay, and the few who weren't in the profession I persuaded, by argument or by force, to take money even if they threw it in the trash. When I was twenty I began to keep a record listing name, age, place and a brief notation on the circumstances and style of lovemaking. By the time I was fifty there were 514 women with whom I had been at least once. I stopped making the list when my body no longer allowed me to have so many and I could keep track of them without paper. I had my own ethics. I never took part in orgies or in public encounters, and I did not share secrets or recount an adventure of the body or the soul, because from the time I was young I realized that none goes unpunished." "The secretaries presented me with three pairs of silk undershorts printed with kisses, and a card in which they offered to remove them for me. It occurred to me that among the charms of old age are the provocations our young female friends permit themselves because they think we are out of commission." "For a week I did not take off my mechanic's coverall, day or night, I did not bathe or shave or brush my teeth, because love taught me too late that you groom yourself for someone, and I'd never had anyone to do that for." "The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of my favorite authors. Every one of his books (some of which are more like novellas) are literary masterpieces to my mind. Each book is lovely, funny, tragic, sad, joyous... human to a fault. Highly recommend.

It is unlikely that, having written the greatest novels, fough a life time for a better world, earned admiration of the whole world, and pondered on it for 25 years and finally written it near 80 as his last work, Gabo was telling a story of an creepy old man whoring since 12 and preying on a 14-year old virgin on his 90th birthday. I could not find anyone saying so, but after reading his biography by Gerald Martin and "Live to tell the tale" and reading this novel twice in a row (one usual and one slow), I come to the conviction that Gabo was having fun with himself and with the world: the whores are metaphor of all the life's conquests, each giving moment's thrill and leaving nothing to hold onto, and to feel alive till the end one better leaves some dreams unfulfilled, like keeping the virgin intact but reachable. All those whoring and mounting a servant without consent are quite tough to swallow for ordinary readers, especially people outside Caribbean culture, but Gabo was just doing his magic realism, along with the dying cat, the demented old lover, long-died mother appearing on his bed, etc. The newspaper work, the city (Barranquilla where Gabo worked as a journalist), the few people, the cat, the reading and music, the chance meeting with old lovers, the treaty of Neerlandia ... all bringing forth a vivid, layered society of good and evil and love so natural and relatable. I believe this is a wise old man contemplating the end, having no care how the world see him, examining the complicated emotions of disillusions about a life lived and slipping away, wanting to have some dreams to hold on to, and also unashamedly expressing his love for the downtrodden, the whores who have given him joys through his life. Wonder if anyone in the whole world share my view...

No, the challenge is not to follow in the steps of the protagonist but rather it is not to come to a place where his choices are all that is left. Marquez writes in such a lyrical and musical manner it was hard to put this book down. A beautiful read despite the challenging nature of the relationship at its heart.

The heart touching story of an old man, looking back at his life and the door to his love which he slammed shut to a life of sexual gratification. His love for a young girl on the verge of becoming a prostitute who he doesn’t touch though very much in love.

On the eve of his 90th birthday , a not very likeable bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. The girl who is procured for him is enchanting but exhausted from working all day in a factory + caring for her siblings , she can do little but sleep . What follows is a cross between Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground + Nabokov's Lolita. Detached from the sordid reality of prostitution , Memories Of My Melancholy Whores is dream-like and surreal . Short + succinct , it glitters like a clear gem .

Although it lacks the magic-realism of his other novels, ...Melancholy Whores still displays Marquez' narrative brilliance. It's a short read, but it's well-worth the effort.

Not his best work,still manages to transport the reader into the fantasies of geriatric writer. Good one time read.