25th Aug 2007
Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004) is Gabriel Garcia Marquez‘s first new novel in 10 years after Of Love and Other Demons (1994). This is my first Marquez book, although I had a brief stint with One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) which ended after 3 pages. I intend to read it in full, of course, since it is considered Marquez’s masterpiece but from what I heard it requires a more serious effort in reading.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores is a strange love story in a brothel between a 90 year old writer and a 14 year old girl who works as a day laborer. The book shines in its absolutely magnificent style of cunning yet elegant narration rather than for the plot. The imagery is vivid, nostalgic and takes the reader through an amazing whirlwind of emotions packaged in dark humor and pathos. The book is short, just above 100 pages, and I read it in a couple of days, which is quite unusual for me. The characters in the novel are shrouded in mystery, in a style of narration characteristic of a master story teller, even though they are presented very openly. We end up thinking that we know nothing about the characters after believing we have figured them out. I can’t help but wonder about this specific aspect because often this is so true in real life. How often do we surprise ourself with some specific face of ours that we never knew existed ! This is not really a bad thing per se, for this element of surprise often gives life a special touch of magic and enigma. As the saying goes, when we think we know all the answers life changes all the questions.
An excerpt from the book:
I was beginning to fall asleep in the small hours when I heard something like the sound of multitudes in the sea and a panic in the trees that pierced my heart. I went to the bathroom and wrote on the mirror: Delgadina, my love, the Christmas breezes have arrived.
One of my happiest memories was a disturbance I felt on a similar morning as I was leaving school. What’s wrong with me? The dazed teacher asked: Ah, my boy, can’t you see it’s the breezes? Eighty years later I felt it again when I woke in Delgadina’s bed, and it was the same punctual December returning with its translucent skies, its sandstorms, its whirlwinds in the streets that blew the roofs off houses and lifted the skirts of schoolgirls. This was when the city acquired a spectral resonance. On breezy nights, even in the neighborhoods in the hills, shouts from the public market could be heard as of they were just around the corner. It was not unusual for the December gusts to allow us to locate friends, scattered among distant brothels, by the sound of their voices.
I can’t compare this book with his other creations, since I haven’t read any of the other books, but it definitely made me a big fan of Marquez. I plan to read some more of his books as time permits.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores is translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman, who also translated several other books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez including Love in the Time of Cholera (1988), The General in His Labyrinth (1991), Strange Pilgrims: Stories (1993), Of Love and Other Demons (1995), News of a Kidnapping (1997), Living to Tell the Tale(2002).
Columbian born Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. His autobiography Living to Tell the Tale was published in 2002.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004) is Gabriel Garcia Marquez‘s first new novel in 10 years after Of Love and Other Demons (1994). This is my first Marquez book, although I had a brief stint with One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) which ended after 3 pages. I intend to read it in full, of course, since it is considered Marquez’s masterpiece but from what I heard it requires a more serious effort in reading.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores is a strange love story in a brothel between a 90 year old writer and a 14 year old girl who works as a day laborer. The book shines in its absolutely magnificent style of cunning yet elegant narration rather than for the plot. The imagery is vivid, nostalgic and takes the reader through an amazing whirlwind of emotions packaged in dark humor and pathos. The book is short, just above 100 pages, and I read it in a couple of days, which is quite unusual for me. The characters in the novel are shrouded in mystery, in a style of narration characteristic of a master story teller, even though they are presented very openly. We end up thinking that we know nothing about the characters after believing we have figured them out. I can’t help but wonder about this specific aspect because often this is so true in real life. How often do we surprise ourself with some specific face of ours that we never knew existed ! This is not really a bad thing per se, for this element of surprise often gives life a special touch of magic and enigma. As the saying goes, when we think we know all the answers life changes all the questions.
An excerpt from the book:
I was beginning to fall asleep in the small hours when I heard something like the sound of multitudes in the sea and a panic in the trees that pierced my heart. I went to the bathroom and wrote on the mirror: Delgadina, my love, the Christmas breezes have arrived.
One of my happiest memories was a disturbance I felt on a similar morning as I was leaving school. What’s wrong with me? The dazed teacher asked: Ah, my boy, can’t you see it’s the breezes? Eighty years later I felt it again when I woke in Delgadina’s bed, and it was the same punctual December returning with its translucent skies, its sandstorms, its whirlwinds in the streets that blew the roofs off houses and lifted the skirts of schoolgirls. This was when the city acquired a spectral resonance. On breezy nights, even in the neighborhoods in the hills, shouts from the public market could be heard as of they were just around the corner. It was not unusual for the December gusts to allow us to locate friends, scattered among distant brothels, by the sound of their voices.
I can’t compare this book with his other creations, since I haven’t read any of the other books, but it definitely made me a big fan of Marquez. I plan to read some more of his books as time permits.
Memories of My Melancholy Whores is translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman, who also translated several other books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez including Love in the Time of Cholera (1988), The General in His Labyrinth (1991), Strange Pilgrims: Stories (1993), Of Love and Other Demons (1995), News of a Kidnapping (1997), Living to Tell the Tale(2002).
Columbian born Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. His autobiography Living to Tell the Tale was published in 2002.
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