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Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Product: Memories of My Melancholy Whores
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List Price: $20.00
Our Price: $16.00
Your Save: $ 4.00 ( 20% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Knopf
Book written by: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Product Description: Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 863.64
EAN: 9781400044603
ISBN: 140004460X
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 115
Publication Date: 2005-10-25
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: 2005-10-25
Studio: Knopf
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Editorial Reviews about Memories of My Melancholy Whores:
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Memories of My Melancholy Whores is Gabriel García Márquez’s first work of fiction in ten years, written at the height of his powers, the Spanish edition of which Ilan Stavans called, “Masterful. Erotic. As hypnotizing as it is disturbing” (Los Angeles Times).
On the eve of his ninetieth birthday, our unnamed protagonist–an undistinguished journalist and lifelong bachelor–decides to give himself “the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.”
The virgin, whom an old madam procures for him, is splendidly young, with the silent power of a sleeping beauty. The night of love blossoms into a transforming year. It is a year in which he relives, in a rush of memories, his lifetime of (paid-for) sexual adventures and experiences a revelation that brings him to the edge of dying–not of old age, but, at long last, of uncorrupted love.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores is a brilliant gem by the master storyteller.
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Spotlight customer reviews about Memories of My Melancholy Whores:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: How does he do so much with so little?
Comment: This is the fourth book i have read by Marquez. I was a little weary of this one at first, bc frankly, the book is not that thick, and I didn't know what to expect. Truly interesting book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "It is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things"
Comment: Philip Roth's Everyman came to mind as I started Memories of My Melancholy Whores. However, this 90 year old protagonist never dwells on his past like Roth's Everyman did; astonishingly, despite his age, he moves forward chasing that elusive love he never had, but in the arms of an adolescent virgin.
The book has some very keen observations on old age and we're privy to the mind of an archetype we see daily but never pay too much attention to. The book dabbles in profundity and sentimentalism and oddly enough, we feel no contempt for the old man who lusts after a young girl. We almost feel sorry for him.
Some of Marquez's observations are sure to stir controversies but not once does he cheapen the proceedings. Brilliance it seems, does not diminish with age.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The desires of an older man
Comment: A book about the desires of an older man and the reflection of is own life.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Minotaur-mania: Garcia Marquez Explores the Myth of Love
Comment: Made In Hero: The War for Soap
At first glance, this novel struck me as little more than the sly chronicle of a dirty old man striving to celebrate his ninetieth birthday by bedding a virgin. Incidentally, she would have to be a minor since no other kind of virgin exists in this fantastical kingdom of brothels. In actuality, the setting is a coastal slum of fermenting humanity-transformed, even ennobled, by the narrative. That's just classic Garcia Marquez. But I have to say that beyond the crude, almost cutesy premise, there's a good deal more to the story.
My usual strategy for reviewing a book is to mark significant phrases with sticky tabs. That not only saves me from having to hunt for those sentences later, when I will want to quote them, but it also begins to shape a theme on which to base my comments. The technique usually works, except that for this book, I found myself tabbing every other page. It dawned on me that unless I was planning to write a review longer than the 115 pages of the novel, the tabs weren't very useful at all.
And yet, I wondered if it were really possible to condense to a few hundred words-almost a pinhead-one of the most vast and essential of human preoccupations-that thing we have called so many names, all of which distill down to love. Gabriel Garcia Marquez does this masterfully-and with moments so marvelous and simple they edge toward the sublime. It's uncanny how much this novel reminds me of Pablo Picasso.
Picasso did a series of etchings of the Minotaur-that mythic freak born with the body of a man and the head of a bull. Imprisoned in a labyrinth, the minotaur is fed a steady diet of virgins until the doomed day when he is slain by a boy who might easily have become his lunch. Now here is where the minotaur gets tricky: in spite of his propensity to rape and pillage, it's hard to hate him. After all, he's a beast who can't help himself. Classically, the minotaur is both aggressor and victim. As the vulnerable brute, he's the perfect symbol of man's own dual nature. He had special significance to Picasso, whose art famously explored the themes of sexuality, violence, and war. One of Picasso's most provocative prints features the minotaur kneeling over a sleeping girl. He studies her, longingly, perhaps leeringly-and with intentions we can only guess.
In Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Garcia Marquez has translated the theme from picture to words. He simply substitutes the minotaur with his human counterpart, in this case, an elderly intellectual who describes himself as "ugly, shy, and anachronistic"-qualities that make him an unlikely macho, for sure. And yet, he has a mysterious appeal to women, having been abducted at age ten by a brothel madame (who happens to look like a pirate) and sexually initiated by force. The result both grants and dooms him to a life of relentless sexual indulgence, with a minotaur-esque appetite, at that. In spite of a close call with a local society type, he has fatefully avoided marriage. Thus, on the eve of his ninetieth birthday, the dirty old man struggles against aching bones, a pining for all the loves that were and might have been, and the encroaching sorrow of loneliness.
His solution is the salacious birthday bash. To make it happen, he solicits the help of a notorious madame who is almost as old as he is. Though he is a nearly destitute pensioner, and the madame a brutal bargainer, they manage to strike a deal that sets him up with a thirteen-year-old girl who additionally labors at a button factory by day. After a lengthy grooming ritual (he takes as long to dress as the bishop), the old man arrives at the rendezvous only to find the girl exhausted and sleeping. He can't bring himself to wake her, so decides to be content simply watching her sleep. At sunrise, as the man gingerly places his money on the pillow to pay for sex that never happened, the gesture is nothing less than a sad offering to a goddess. Among other insights, this experience, repeated night after night, leads the old bachelor to conclude that unrequited, unrealized love is the true force that rules the world. Memories of My Melancholy Whores is as profound a statement of love as we are likely to come by-especially disguised in such a little book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Recycled and shallow... is this really Marquez ?
Comment: The protagonist of this book mentions a Latin quote: "No old man forgets where he has hidden his treasure" Well....in this case it seems that Marquez has forgotten exactly that: the place where he has hidden his superb skills as a narrator of fascinating, magic realistic stories.
The novel is a shallow, disappointing story about a 90 years old bachelor and his love for a teenage virgin he likes to watch while she sleeps. The magic atmosphere of the small South American city which is Marquez forte in other novels feels like a strained recycled background to an unsatisfying story.
Is it possible that like Salvador Dali at old age allowing young painters to imitate his style, this book was written by a ghost writer while the old master nods his head slowly in the heat of an afternoon siesta in Macombo ?
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