TITLE: Memories of My Melancholy WhoresAUTHOR: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
STARTED: February 12, 2009
FINISHED: February 15, 2009
PAGES: 115
GENRE: Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of the night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.
SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit–he has purchased hundreds of women–he asks a madam for her assistance. The fourteen-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with this sleeping beauty at his side, it is he who awakens to a romance he has never known.
THOUGHTS: I think I need to read this book again. It wasn't a "keeper" per se, but the story left me thinking that, upon a second read, I would understand the characters and the themes better. Memories is about finding love at the end of life - but I think it goes deeper than that. Marquez explores what it means to age and be on the cusp of death. If you find love at the end of life, does that mean you're desperately trying to hang on to that love or life itself?
As I was reading this book, the story flew by quickly. I found myself confused in a few spots, trying to keep names and actions straight. It was not until after I finished the text that I began to think about the themes and philosophy Marquez presents in his work. I liked how Marquez makes the reader think about death and what it means to age. More importantly, I found it very intriguing how he made his unnamed narrator so emotional while retaining an aura of emotional distance. Here is a man who is ninety. He is written is such a way that he sounds like a callous bastard who had no attachment to anything. And, yet, as the story progresses he grows on you and you emotionally connect to him as he goes through those latest years in life. When the narrator finally explodes, it's jarring but not unexpected.
I think I may put this book aside and read it again. I stretched out this read over a few days, so I wonder, because it is so short, what I would learn if I read it in one sitting.
RATING: 7/10 [Very Good]
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