Memories of My Melancholy Whores

I can see a lot of people hating this book, because the main plot involves a 90 year old falling in love with a 14 year old virgin whore. And taken at face value, a lot of what goes on in this story can be pretty twisted--but having said that, I really don't think you're supposed to take this story at face value. The main protagonist, when you take a step back, is sad, and his insides are contorted with nostalgia and a lack of fulfillment in his life. I don't want to spoil too much, but it's presented as a love story, and to put it simply, it isn't. I thought it was a very quick read and very enjoyable and unique. Definitely a must read for any fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

This is a jewel of a novella from a master writer, Gabriel García Márquez, producing his first work of fiction in a decade. The book is only 96 pages, but it's the humanity that Márquez brings to a decidedly unconventional love story that makes this work transcendent in the same unique way that the author has been able to conjure in his previous masterwork, "Love in the Time of Cholera". The story focuses on a solitary ninety-year old newspaper columnist who seems resigned to the fact that all his life, he has had to pay prostitutes to be intimate with him. He even insisted on giving money even to the nonprofessionals, urging them to throw it in the trash if they were insulted. For his birthday, he treats himself to an adolescent virgin, all of 14, to be provided by a brothel madam he has known for years. She becomes his muse as his life begins to have more meaning, but his growing obsession torments him in ways he did not expect so late in life.

Even though one expects Márquez to follow the path of Vladimir Nabokov in his classic book "Lolita", the drama presented here isn't as prurient in nature because the potentially pedophiliac aspects do not interest him. In fact, various complications, whether they be hallucinations, murder or inclement weather, keep delaying the moment of inevitability. Instead, the author focuses far more on the impact of love on a man's chaste existence heretofore filled with art, books and music. The emotion induced by the presence of the girl makes the writer's carefully cultivated bachelor habits seem pretentious and trivial, exposing himself to be rather dysfunctional in his world. Rather than representing an antagonist in the story, the girl is merely a vehicle by which these self-revelations occur. The distance Márquez provides between the old man and the girl is what makes the story far more tantalizing than the shocking prospect of a romance between them. Filled with the author's lusty prose as well as his emotional truths, this book is a highly recommended read.

After many years of silence, Marquez has given us a novella that touches on many themes: reminiscences of a long life filled with sensual pleasures, artistic pursuits and intellectual achievements, though lacking in the one aspect of life that for some, makes life truly worth living - love.

Our protagonist is a sensitive old man, living in his long dead parents large house. He writes a weekly column for the city's newspaper on varying topics from the town's history, literary and musical reviews and the perspectives of a scholar of ninety years of age.

Never married, throughout his long life, his habits have been to visit brothels to gratify his basic physical desires. As he well knows, however, sexuality does not necessarily equate to love.

To celebrate his ninetieth birthday, he decides to make a request to an old Madam, and that is to supply him with a young virgin to spend during the night of this momentous event. As usual, a gentleman in every respect, he spends two hours dressing, looking immaculate, and arrives at the back entrance of the house of ill repute.

He finds the young girl in the room, sleeping nude on the bed. She of course is beautiful, where, somewhat surprisingly, he chooses to simply watch her sleep. The dawn arrives and he silently leaves the room and out the back door. This is only the beginning, though, as he finds himself experiencing a feeling he has never really felt before in his ninety years.

As adolescent love, true love, sometimes does, it acts as inspiration, and the old man begins to write beautiful love letters as part of his weekly column, and becomes famous throughout the city. Readers write in from everywhere praising the old man for his insight into the ways of pure and unrequited love.

This novella is in no way a sentimental journey of old age and romantic love. It is a sad treatise of a full life without true love, however, and the loneliness of those in old age who have never experienced it.

Why this writer calls this love a pure one, is that the old man and young woman never consummate their feelings, as he only watches her as she sleeps, and dreams and thinks about her when he is away from her.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores is wonderfully written and translated, bordering on the lyrical and poetic. It is a lesson about the pitfalls of old age and the utter necessity that love become part of our lives as loneliness in old age can be a terrible end to a long life.

Recommended.

When we were young we all fantasized about the mysteries of sex, but most of us had a problem with picturing our own parents as being sexual creatures. There is a myth that as men and women grow older they lose their desire for sex. It ain't so! Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written a short novella concerning the mistaken belief that people mature out of their sexual desires. The flesh may be weak, but the spirit remains more than willing. One of the joys of reaching senior citizen status is discovering all the folklore about dimming sexual interest is wrong. We are all still horny young people inside our aging physical bodies. Sex is still a motivating instinct to even the very old and wise among mankind. Ask a person in their 90's and they will usually tell you that they still feel like a teenager trapped inside a shell. Visit any nursing home and hear the formerly repressed sexual fantasies of patients who are finally free of their inhibitions to talk about, or ramble on about their sexual dreams and frustrations. One of the joys of this book is the masterful way the author describes a main character who decides to give himself a night of passion with a teenage virgin for this 90th birthday gift. Set in a very un-politically correct, but actual world where brothels are everywhere, but never officially recognized by respectable society, Marquez tells of his own memories of his adventures in that very real, underground world. His character discovers love for the first time at the age of ninety and his love for a 14-year-old part-time prostitute leads him into a new phase of his life. His masterful describing of the wonders of aging is more than worth the time spent reading this short novel. Despite its title and setting, this is not a porn book. It's a book about aging and dying and passion and love. It's a fascinating journey down the corridors of time where old memories mix with fantasy to form new erotic dreams and experiences. It strangely resembles the paradoxical ramblings of the previously mentioned nursing home patients. The book appears to have lost nothing in being translated from Spanish to English.

I don't think books should be judged against their author's other works. I think they should be judged, on the whole, against all other books.

If you purchase this slim volume, know that you're not going to get _100 Years of Solitude_ or _Love in the Time of Cholera_. What you ARE going to get, however, is a short, well-written, poignant parable that will stick with you.

Many reviewers say this is a book about growing old, after all the narrator reaches his 90th birthday at the beginning. Of course, growing old is part of it, but to me, the larger theme is about loneliness.

The narrator is an old man, a bachelor, a mediocre journalist who has never experienced any passion. Or, more to the point, has never LET himself experience any passion. He's not handsome and has never had sex with someone who he hasn't paid.

At one point in his life, he planned to marry a woman and she taught him to crochet baby booties. They'd do that together every night of their courtship. I thought that to be one of the most sentimental, feminine details of the novella. The morning of his wedding, though, he never got out of bed.

He never consummates his "relationship" with Delgadina, the young girl. In truth, he never even sees her when she is awake. He is, however, awakened by her.

It's an extremely enjoyable, two-hour read. I would describe it as a good plane-flight book, but of course that depends on how far you're flying.

In this short novel, G.G. Màrquez turns to one of his favorite places: the brothel.
His main character `slept in the red-light district two or three times a week, and with such a variety of companions that (he) was twice crowned client of the year. Whores left him no time to be married and sex was the consolation you have when you can't have love.'

To celebrate his 90th birthday he pays himself the luxury of a libertine night with a nymphet, an adolescent virgin girl. But, as in Y. Kawabata's novel `The House of the Sleeping Beauties' (an excerpt serves as motto for this novel), the relationship remains platonic.

One of the main characters in his book `Love in the time of cholera' states that `nothing in the world is more difficult than love.'
But here, the miracle happens, `the first love of my life at the age of ninety.' And even more miraculously, the adolescent girl is `head on heels in love with him.' (!)
At long last, one of G.G. Màrquez's heroes is `condemned to die of happy love' and not in love's torments.

In his characteristic ironic style, G.G. Màrquez's turns one of his obsessions into a spiritual relationship which leaves his hero `radiant'.
Not to be missed.

Much of what I write here will be based on John Updike's outstanding and highly appreciative review of this book in "The New Yorker. Updike opens his review with a scene from " One Hundred Years of Solitude" in which a middle - aged man enters the room of a prostitute who has already been with seventy men during the course of that day. He desists, and instead falls in love with her.

This is similar to the basic situation of the novel. Only now the man is ninety - years old, a journalist living alone whose sexual experience has always been with prostitutes, and who has never known what it is to truly love.

He promises to treat himself with a night of love with a young prostitute even if this means spending a month of his salary on it. But when he comes and sees the worn-out young girl he cannot simply use her as the others have. Instead he contemplates her as she sleeps and falls in love with her. And this love becomes the pleasure and meaning of his life.

Updike says the story is very much about aging, and about morality, about the ' dying of the light' But here the ninety - year old man finds redemption in love, and towards the end of his days appreciates life in a way he has not before.

Parallels come to mind. The seventy- year old Goethe falling impossibly in love with a seventeen year old girl, and being rejected by her.

Or from another world entirely the story in the Gemara ( Talmud) of Eliezer ben Dordaya who has never met a woman he has not ' come into' He in his old age, and at his last minute repents and is granted the world- to - come.

Here the repentance leads only to a mortal reflective 'love'.

In the end the meaning seems to be much in the spirit of Hawthorne's famous dictum " Until we love we do not begin to be".

The question then becomes however " What happens to us even if we live in the most intense and real love in old age" Can that stop the march of Time and Death? Can that be anything but a flickering last moment of painful Beauty before the lights go out?.

This thin volume can be read in one evening - it goes very fast, not only because the book is not thick, but because it flows... After a long time Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote finally a novel, and although it is not comparable to his past epic, complicated accomplishments, it is remarkable.

The ninety years old journalist decides to come back to his habit of brothel sex, but when he gets to the room with a very young virgin, procured especially for him, he unexpectedly, and for the first time in his life, falls in love... His love is romantic, innocent and gives him new life power.

Given the story, the title is misleading, but it is explained very well; the old man is entangled in his memories, habits and generally his past, which consisted in a great degree of his sexual adventures. Because of his lifestyle, he found himself alone in his old age, and the newly discovered love is for him confusing, absolutely surprising and invigorating.

I read this book with great pleasure, and I was happy, that it was not very long and elaborate, because it is a small treasure anyway.

It was worth waiting for. After a decade of reclusion, Gabriel García Márquez is back with a new novel. Actually, "Memories of my Melancholy Whores" is so short that it is a novella. The size recalls back to his early works, like "Leaf storm", but we can notice a writer who is more mature, more confident.

His prose, as usual, is singular. Nobody is able to play with words, their construction and meaning, like Gabo. His short narrative is fast and touching. The nameless narrator has just turned 90, and he has never found love. As he remembers he never spent a night with a woman he loved -- all of them were paid. And this time won't be different. He calls his friend and whorehouse owner to say he wants to spend a night with a virgin.

After a short search everything is arranged. But that is the very moment when the narrator will find his long lost humanity. Years of meeting strange woman, writing chronicles for a newspaper and the absence of friends and family has turned him into a de-humanized being. Now at 90 it is high time to find the lost time.

But it is not easy to enter back in the world of humans, as García Márquez exploits in his "Memories of my melancholy Whores". However much this novella may echo Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita", it is Charles Perrault's "Sleeping Beauty" that is the recurrent image in the book. When people are adduced to the land of dreams, little they know what happens in the outside world.

"Memories of my melancholy whores" doesn't have so many characters as most of García Márquez's works, like "A Hundred Years of Solitude", and therefore easier to follow and read. And although it may not as genial as his masterpiece, it is still great prose, with well-developed characters and situations. As most of his books, this one seems to take place in a land of dreams, which makes it more special since one of the main characters spends most of time sleeping. But, it is one who is awaken that seems to dream most of the time.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's first work of fiction in a decade opens with, "The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of wild love with an adolescent virgin." "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" brings the reader in immediately, perhaps within the scope of our prurient interests, but nonetheless the author has captured our attention. From the onset one hopes there is some substance beneath the surface, so as not to feel guilty for reading such a corruptible beginning, but this thought quickly dissipates as the beautifully written novel proves to be only book cover deep. The unnamed protagonist (some refer to him as "scholar") was the cable editor of "El Diario de La Paz" for forty years, but currently his "only obligation was to write the signed column published on Sundays."

Marquez's writing is often mellifluous and precise. The author writes,

I had very bad chemistry with animals, just as I do with children

before they begin to speak. They seem mute in their souls. I don't

hate them, but I can't tolerate them, because I never learned to deal

with them. I think it is against nature for a man to get along better

with his dog than he does with his wife, to teach it to eat and

defecate on schedule, to answer his questions and share his

sorrows. But not picking up the typographers' cat would have

been an insult. Besides, it was a beautiful specimen of an angora,

with a rosy, shining coat, bright eyes, and meows that seemed on

the verge of being words. They gave him to me in a wicker basket,

with a certificate of ancestry and an owner's manual like the one

for assembling bicycles.

But the plot, a ninety-year old, life-long bachelor deciding to procure an adolescent virgin, is shallow as a puddle during a heat wave (non-existent). The aged john says, "I have never gone to bed with a woman I didn't pay," seems to be ignorant of many aspects of his life, most notably not allowing himself to love. However, the heart of the old man begins to feel sensations of love after seeing Delgadina (the name the ninety-year old fastens upon the fourteen year-old) for the first time.

To say this January and December relationship is unconventional would be an understatement. The matchmaker, Rosa Cabarcas, the "owner of an illicit house" pushes the relationship despite the protagonist pulling away at times. Pushing the plot forward is the question, will he reach for more than his usual grab of unattached sex? The slim novel reads more like a touchy-feel good message presented for the after-school crowd, that is once you get past the age-difference, madam, and countless whores. The story's message shouts: It is never too late for love. But it is too late for "Memories of My Melancholy Whores." The main character is not very likable and often detestable, especially his thoughts on Delgadina.

Marquez is no doubt a wordsmith, but the sparkles he ignites leave no indelible trace of a penetrating story, only the retelling of memories of an old john that one would rather forget.

Bohdan Kot

I finished the book last month--fast reading enjoyable. However, my previous Marquez title was "Love In The Time Of Cholera." Somehow this book felt like a smaller version of the former. For example, the sin both books mature as "protagonist" through their old age, they both are pretty much glorified "whore-mongers," they both have issues with love, both have a mother figure in their lives, both books are full of steamy sexual moments, in both cases the "true-love" remains delayed, asexual (it becomes or hints to become sexual only when that "higher love" is materialized or implied to materialize towards the end of both books), and of course, the girls are in both cases quite younger than the protagonist.
I was actually going to give 3.5 stars, but the store does not have 1/2 star system. So, this time, Marquez amigo gets 4.
Try it-not bad, not too great either.

The prose in this book is flawless in my mind and keeps the reader interested. This book follows through the eyes of the protagonist, a ninety-year old man who has never really loved anyone and lives in Colombia. He is set up with a younger woman who he ends up spending the next year of his life with. The protagonist, who is never given an official name, is not used to being intimate without paying for it, after having been with over 500 prostitutes in his lifetime.

This novella is crafted in a way that not one sentence is flawed, and its gripping until the very end-- although a short novella, it is a read that you can easily do in one day. Not only is the story great, but the writing is fearless and fantastic.

Despite a number of reliable and very positive reviews, I found the premise of this book troubling and of limited appeal. Nonetheless, I picked this small book up at my local library and started to read and found myself captivated.

Much to my delight this is not the prurient or sordid, low brow "sexcapade" I had feared, but rather a beautifully written story about aging and the search for love. Marquez's language, as usual, is both beautiful like music and so densely packed with meaning that it is safe to say that the author says in 115 pages what others would take 500 pages to accomplish. For example is this sentence; "The adolescents of my generation, greedy for life, forgot in body and soul about their hopes for the future until reality taught them that tomorrow was not what they had dreamed, and they discovered nostalgia." Or this; "Blood circulated through her veins with the fluidity of a song that branched off into the most hidden areas of her body and returned to her heart, purified by love." Bravo to Edith Grossman for so skillfully translating that the English is stunning. Imagine it in Spanish!

And so as it turns out, while this will not appeal to everyone, I found it very much worth the read.

A 'novella' is perhaps what most aptly describes this smallish work by Marquez's standards. The story offers the unusual thematic mix of ripe old age and eroticism and much of the action centers around that venerable icon of Latin American institutions - the 'putaria' (or whorehouse). And the story is simply retold: the narrator, an unnamed man of almost 90 years strong, intends to spend the night of his 90th birthday ravishing a teenage virgin at a local whorehouse. As luck would have it he falls in love with the sleeping nymph and returns again and again to spend a night by her side while she slumbers on, sedatedly. In the meantime this unexpectedly tacit and strangely platonic loveaffair transforms his jaded mind and whatever life he has left.

A great deal of this story's novelty is the odd mix of old age and sex and there is plenty of bodily detail in support of both motifs. The style is refined and immaculate as is usual from the pen of Garcia Marquez. Strangely, there's hardly an adverb in the entire narrative!

Still the book leaves me a little less than satisfied. In the end the main character is perhaps just a little too aloof for my taste and perhaps the resolution of the storyline is too thin. It leaves too little warmth behind.

But it is still a fine book and well worth reading.

As an author of great books, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has done it again with this beautifully written novel. Perhaps it should be described as a novella, since it is such a short one. However, it is packed with a tender message of humanity that is not seen often enough in current popular writings. It portrays a very elderly man who desires to experience a virgin as a gift for his 90th birthday. That is only the premise of the story. The actual interplay amongst the characters is far more complex, and the emotional attachment our protagonist has for the young lady he encounters is more of a spiritual one of distant reverance. This is not a political book as have been some of his prior works, but rather Marquez's best writings that "holds up a mirror to nature". It is well worth the read, and I highly recommend it for mature audiences of fine literature.
Dale Haufrect, M.D., M.A.
Med DataLink, Inc.

Another reviewer said that this shouldn't be your first Marquez novel...but it was mine.

In a premise that feels even more outrageous these days with so much information available about child abuse and prostitution around the globe, this novel (novella) manages to steer away from a horrific, sordid reality to dig deeply into a 90-year-old man's discovery of love. Never mentioning his own name, the old man decides to celebrate his 9th decade by deflowering a teenage virgin in a brothel he's used for most of his adult life. Sad details of his empty experience and disconnected life leak out as he prepares for his memorable birthday.

But if you're reading this for taboo titillation, think again: the story takes a different route as the Old Man makes some interesting new discoveries while reflecting on his sexual past.

Comparing this story to Nabokov's LOLITA, Humbert falls for his nymphet and eventually takes her, suffering for his love and ultimately paying with his life (both figuratively and literally) but the Old Man here can't bring himself to bite that apple, so to speak, and eventually falls more deeply in love with his slumbering teen.

The story follows the next year as the Old Man becomes weary, weathered, desirous, yearning, young, making observations on a wasted life and the renewing power of love at any age.

I only wished there was more (what was behind the murder of the banker? would more remembrances of the girls he paid for slow the book down?). There was some really solid writing here, well worth reading.

Check it out.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes beautifully. Many paragraphs throughout his works can be easily mistaken for poetry, as they contain language so vivid and colorful that it inspires even the most disinterested reader. MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES is Marquez's first piece of fiction in ten years, yet it maintains the writing acumen that he's famous for and that permeates his other works. It is also markedly shorter than many of his other novels; the 113 poignant pages of this novella take the form of a memoir. The writing is both profound and superb, and the story is eerily familiar.

This novella is the story of a fastidiously dressed man. He is scholarly yet insecure, debonair though not rich. The Scholar, as everyone calls him --- both because of his age and because of his wisdom (which is distributed through his Sunday column in a newspaper) --- awakens on the morning of his 90th birthday in the beautiful house that his parents bequeathed to him and begins to recount the story of his life, which has been filled with women for hire but has remained largely devoid of love.

In a manner similar to Leo Tolstoy's THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH, the Scholar realizes much about life as he approaches the end of his own; unlike Ivan Ilyich, however, the Scholar is not bedridden and feels a yearning for rekindling something of his past. His only true friend in the novella --- a weathered woman, only a few years younger than the Scholar and the owner and overseer of an aged brothel --- reminds him of his wonderful past and aids him in what he thinks will be one of his final hoorahs.

Fortunately for readers, the Scholar's life takes an unexpected turn, and to his disbelief, he falls in love with an unlikely girl. His Sunday column becomes a personal diary of love that touches the heart and captures the imagination of his readers.

Abruptly, calamity strikes and shatters what the reader hopes will be a happy ending to a checkered life. However, the Scholar must rebound and take up the search for his found, and lost, love.

MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES is not a story about death; rather, it is a vibrant story of life renewing itself and the odd places where people find their passion. The setting of a lovely Spanish town and characters deserving of our empathy make this novella a memorable, beautiful and inspiring one.

--- Reviewed by Scott Handwerker

"The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin." So begins Gabriel Garcia Marquez' latest gift to the reader, his first work of fiction in ten years, a slim novella of only 115 pages, but what a fine read on an October evening. The unnamed narrator, a writer who still writes a Sunday newspaper column, is a lifelong bachelor who has only slept with prostitutes and has kept records-- by the time he was fifty, he had had 514 women "at least once." This character finds love for the first time in his ninetieth year. He contacts an old madam, one Rosa Cabarcas, whom he has not seen or heard from in twenty years, with his unusual request. When she asks for two days to investigate the "market," the narrator responds that "in an affair such as this, at my age, each hour is like a year. . . You have a fool's luck, she [Rosa] said. I found a little thing even better than what you wanted, but there's one drawback: she just turned fourteen." The narrator's year long passion for the young nymphet he names "Delgadina" then begins. What we have here, however, is not a Humbert Humbert/Lolita affair. The narrator is transformed by a love as pure as the proverbial wind-driven snow. His Sunday columns become love letters to Delgadina that he insists be published in his Florentine handwriting, a sure sign, according to his editor in chief, of "senile vanity."

Garquez once again writes with humorous eroticism; he also says profound things about age. We experience the first symptom of old age when we begin to look like our father. The first changes are so subtle that we hardly notice them. We go on seeing ourselves as we always have, "from the inside, but others observe you from the outside." We age more and with "more intensity in pictures than in reality." And finally: "The decade of my fifties had been decisive because I became aware that almost everybody was younger than I. The decade of my sixties. . . I no longer had the time to make mistakes. My seventies were frightening because of a certain possibility that the decade might be the last. Still, when I woke alive on the first morning of my nineties in the happy bed of Delgadina, I was transfixed by the agreeable idea that life was not something that passes by. . . but a unique opportunity to turn over on the grill and keep broiling on the other side for another ninety years."

No one else writes so beautifullly about love in old age. No other writer, living or dead, writes quite like Marquez. Those of us who are his admirers, and we are legion, thank him for this little gem of a story and anxiously await the next volume of his memoirs as well.

For whatever reason, I seem to have become a devotee of the "lesser" works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have not yet read One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera. I have, however, read and truly enjoyed Of Love and Other Demons and A Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

Now comes Memories of My Melancholy Whores.

This slim "little" book is a masterpiece--my favorite of the books by Garcia Marquez that I have read.

Here we have a most unsympathetic narrator/protagonist(?). And yet he is somehow the most sympathetic of characters. His world becomes ours (though I've never been near a professional whore). His struggles become our struggles--in all of their pathetic glory.

I sense that this may be true greatness. All I can compare it to is trying to comprehend a rose or witnessing a selfless act of service.

And so it goes. The world moves on and an aged master brings forth an unsuspected marvel: a book short on length, deep in feeling, vast in scope, and somehow strangely long in the tooth when it comes to wisdom.

Read this book!

"Make no mistake: Peaceful madmen are ahead of future." Gabriel Garcia Marquez creates yet another magical, mystic, beautiful piece of literature in his Memories of my melancholy whores. This is his most easily accessible, readable work that I have come across, and yet it is so deeply romantic, sad yet engaging that I read through it in one sitting. Like the opening sentence of this review, Marquez packs punch with many really memorable remarks. Another example: I learnt, in short, love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.

A ninety year old in love with a teenager boggles the mind, but the description is full of the same melancholy and joy as is of love, and the prose flows like a stream of poetry strewn with the genius of the writer. In fact, I cannot help smiling to myself thinking of the following sentences uttered at two different occasions in the novel:

Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love.

I kept interrupting whatever I was doing to call her, and I repeated this for days on end until I realized that it was a phone without a heart.

This is a love story par excellence, and benefits from the creativity of the master at the height of his powers. There are only a handful of characters here, in fact just four or five, and the story is tastefully erotic and deliciously disturbing tale of love. In fact, after reading the novel, all I could repeat to myself (again from the novel itself) was: Ah, me, if this is love, then how it torments!

"Memories of My Melancholy Whores" started out great but ended up a bit of a dud. The premise of the book is interesting enough: a 90-year-old man decides to treat himself to a young virgin on his birthday. He ends up falling in love with her, and spends the next year obsessing over her and reflecting back on all the prostitutes he's slept with over the years. The book also touches on what it's like to age and fear one's imminent death. Unfortunately, though, many of the narrator's recollections are incredibly bland, making this short novel difficult to plow through. I suppose the author was trying to show us how uneventful the narrator's previous relationships have been, but that technique lost my interest in the process.

Some will think that "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is about 90-year-old man seeking sex with a 14-year-old girl, but, it so much more. It is García Márquez's refreshing primer on aging.

Yes, there is the titillation of sex, some think that of a pedophile, but, to stop there is to miss García Márquez's brilliant handling of what it must be like to die from aging.

The hero of the story is a nonagenarian narrator who bears all, tells all and opens the wonderful depravity of wanting, through the physical. It is a regeneration of his youth. He seeks to repudiate what time is doing to him through erotic passion for that which he will never be again - young.

This is García Márquez's first book in more than a decade, and, no, this is not his best achievement, even by his own standard. But, it is a book that is as alive and passionate, as it is morally challenging.

García Márquez has brought us insight into the mind of the extremely old using the extremely young as a backdrop - brilliant. Highly Recommended.

Despite it's preposterous premise - a frequent John seeks a virgin prostitute for his 90th birthday - this story is one of the most touching and genuine love stories I've ever read, featuring characters I never would've thought to put together. Full of passion, dark humor and integrity, this narrative and its characters come to life in precious few words, take up residence in your heart and mind, and stay with you long after the final page is read. Garcia Marquez is a true master of his craft and Edith Grossman's translation is beautiful, as always.

-- Emma D, aka Anna Zimmerman

"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.

As I sit down to write this review I think to myself; how as a women do I comment objectively on a story whose plot revolves around the desire of a ninety year old man to procure himself a 14 year old virgin so he may deflower her? It should be added that the girl doesn't just fall into his lap so to speak, she is unwillingly offered up to him for a price by the village madam. If I think of this novella strictly in those terms the premise simply becomes too perverse as to taint any objectivity I may have. If I think of it more along the lines of an unrequited longing for the beauty and innocence of youth, coupled with a bittersweet look back on a rather unfullfilled life, I fare far better. Still, not even remotely close to his other works in my opinion.

I picked this book just after finishing one by Isabel Allende and finished it in three hours (including a dinner break). No sentence is extra in this book which dwells on and elucidates the dynamics of human emotion which seem to be literally beyond words. The strength of this book is perhaps not its plot, but the talent of the magnificent author to unleash a treasure of words which will make you laugh, cry and ponder. The brilliant trait of this book is that you do not admire the author for having put to words the unsayable, but the protagonist who comes across as a profound, complete character. There is something about this perverted old man which will keep you smiling. Garcia is a magician and no reader in the world should miss out on this book.

GGM writes of his life, so the book makes you wonder what has been happening in these recent fallow years. For the story he adds 10 years to his life and strips away the wealth and worldwide fame. The first person protagonist is living a life of gentile poverty, in his parents house living on a small pension and pay for a weekly newspaper column.

At 90 he has never fallen in love. He's made a lot of love, all of it paid for, except perhaps (not clear) a fiancee. For his birthday, he is gives himself a gift. Like any gift she is completely objectified, she doesn't speak, probably can't read or write, doesn't have a known name, family, etc. He is in love (or maybe just obsessed) with her. She is 15 years old.

He is not a Humbert Humbert... he has not killed her mother, nor manipulated her. He doesn't even push for sex.

I am not sure how to rate this. I gave it 3 stars because I expect more from this writer. In a GGM novel, this story would be woven into other stories like a tapestry and the troubling nature of the content could be softened or sidelined. The prose is very good, and there are a few flashes of the magical realism that characterizes his style.

From ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE to NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL to THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has found endless literary wealth in the declining years of his protagonists, mining their lives, loves, triumphs, losses, and regrets like a skilled excavator of the human soul. In his latest novella, MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES, Marquez returns once again to the haunts of old age, but this time, he gives us the rebirth of a soul that has already passed ninety years in a life so undistinguished, it has presented to us as nameless.

Marquez's hero in this masterful short novel is a former Latin and Spanish teacher ("I was a poor teacher.") turned third-rate journalist, now a human anachronism even in his chosen profession. He lives a bachelor's life, having once nearly married Ximena Ortiz only to leave her standing at the altar. He has lived largely off his modest family inheritance, and as he tells us, has "never gone to bed with a woman [he] didn't pay." By age 50, he has a list of 514 women with whom he has been at least once, after which they were sufficiently few he could keep track of the rest without the list. By all accounts, he is a failure in life, an ugly man without family, friends, or heirs, cannibalizing his own estate.

Our hero wakes one day to a monumental decision: he wants to sleep with an adolescent virgin as a sort of 90th birthday present to himself. He calls his trusted madame, Rose Cabarcas, who arranges for him to spend time with a fourteen year old virgin, a button sewer at a clothing factory. He is captivated by this Lolita's youth and beauty, and thus begins a bizarre relationship that transforms the old man's sad and infertile life. He never learns the true name of the young girl he christens as Delgadina, but she so inspires him -- with "the natural language of her body" instead of words -- that he becomes a master of words and a nationally known figure. The man whose acquaintances had ironically called him "scholar" and "doctor" had achieved the ultimate irony - he became the 90-year-old "Maestro of Love" without the assistance of physical love.

MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES follows a series of sly twists and turns as the main character struggles through faded memories and the insecurities of old age to confront the prospect of death. He doesn't feel old inside, but he is constantly reminded of how he looks to others. A 25th anniversary staff picture in his newspaper editor's office reminds him of his inescapable demise - he is one of only four still alive from the 48 people on display in that commemorative photo. He has even learned to think in decades rather than years, so that he would take passing into his 91st year as a positive sign of a death sentence commuted for another ten years. In the end, the hero and Rosa make a mutual pact that encapsulates both their lifelong relationship and their guardianship of the childlike Delgadina. Depending on your point of view, the old man either lives up to, or triumphs over, the saying he claims is attributed to Julius Caesar - "In the end, it is impossible not to become what others believe you are."

As always, the pleasures of reading Marquez are as much in his language (and Edith Grossman's gorgeous translations) as in his stories and characters. This book is no exception; Marquez continues to write with the style that speaks volumes with a poet's economy of language and exposition. "[I had] no pity at all for those poor children who attended school as the easiest way to escape the tyranny of their parents," he writes. Later, his elderly protagonist observes, "Progress became the myth of the city. Everything changed; planes flew, and a businessman tossed a sack of letters out of a Junker and invented airmail.

MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES is a triumphant exploration of old age and the perspective it provides on one's own life. One scene in the book summarizes that view exquisitely, when the aging hero meets Ximena Ortiz in her wheelchair, many years after failing to appear for their wedding. "I've dreamed of this moment for years, I said. She did not seem to understand. You don't say! she said. And who are you? I never knew if in fact she had forgotten or if it was the final revenge of her life." At 78 years of age himself, Marquez proves he is still a modern master, a writer without equal. Read it like poetry, and savor it sweetly as you go.

memoirs of a demented horny man...garcia marquez has a magical way of presenting the mundane and the vulgar so simply yet elegantly and this is/was his trademark.but this novella has nothing to do with the marquez i know. before this book i 've read "chronicle of a death foretold" being one of his simplest stories and my favorite; and this endless mumbling, this uninteresting and inane "love story" is a huge disappontment following my previous fine memory of marquez.having said all the above; since this was his last work and there may have been some autobiographical elements to this story i decided to read it all but with skipping paragraphs and even pages..so i suggest if you are a fan, skip this one as a whole.dont blur your memory of this magician of an author with such trivial work.

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.

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.

"The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adlescent virgin." So begins this magical new novel, the first one by Garcia Marquez in ten years. The narrator, who is nameless, is a man who is about to enter his 90th year. He is a journalist, a committed bachelor, and someone who has never really known the gift of love, which he distinguishes from mechanical sex, the motions and acts with which he is more than familiar.

Flawlessly translated by Edith Grossman, one gets the feeling that the latest novel by Garcia Marquez is part biographical, as he himself enters into another realm of his life, as he approaches 80 years old. The poetry and magic of language are still intact in this book, but in addition, one finds the rawness and often brutality of language, as words, have replaced some of the sensuality and poetry that we often associate with the sentences that flow from the whirling pen from Garcia Marquez's own hand. To me, these inclusions seem to be intentional, as we see the bachelor descend down the path that was once one of sexual adventure filled instead with love, romance, and uncorrupted love.

In many ways, Memories of My Melancholy Whores reminds me of the same themes that Garcia Marquez used in Love in the Time of Colera, unrequited love, fantasy, purity, and a how the love for an idea can be so much more powerful and beautiful than that of reality itself. Knowing his virgin as if they lived awake becomes more difficult, and she is preferred when she is asleep.

The book is slender, but it is not thin by any means, and for those of us, myself included, who long for, and pine away, often counting the hours until Garcia Marquez writes his next novel, this one is no less deserving, and was most certainly worth the long, tortuous wait.

If you are a casual reader who liked One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Times of Cholera, or the memoir Living to Tell the Tale, be forewarned that this novel is dark, thin and unfortunately, not very substantial. Have you ever read "Sleeping Beauty" from García Márquez's book of stories Strange Pilgrims? Well, this novel is a riff on the same subject, but without the humor and the light touch. In fact, García Márquez's latest is self-recycled not only from "Sleeping Beauty" but also from The General in His Labyrinth (also includes decaying protagonist who cannot consummate his desire with young women), and No One Writes to the Colonel (also about eternal postponement and decrepitude.) García Márquez once told an interviewer that most novelists write one novel in their lifetime, over and over again. This novel is an example of how repetition can go wrong when it is not accompanied by anything new to buttress it. But this is an academic complaint-- who cares if it's new or recycled? Is it fun? Is it fulfilling in some way, emotionally or intellectually to the casual reader? Not really. But for hardcore fans and academics who study this author, this novel is an interesting case study of a novelist trapped in his own shadow.

It saddens me to write this because I am an avid fan and student of García Márquez. This author won the hearts of the world with great fiction and thanks to that achievement he is a living legend. But just because he is a legend does not mean that everything he writes is legendary. A novel is still just a novel. It should move us in some way or take us somewhere we haven't been before. And it should be judged on its own merits and not the fame of its author. Even Shakespeare wrote some plays that most modern audiences find uninteresting. In short, chances are most will be disappointed by this novel.

This is my favorite from Master Marquez, who is now suffering from senile dementia, and can no longer write...
He has fought a lymphatic cancer and it is believed that the cancer treatment has accelerated his mental decline.
Imagine myself exalted on my way to find his house in Colombia only to be shot down in flames after hearing he had fled Colombia in 1981 and received political asylum in Mexico. It turned out not only "morality is a question of time," as Rosa Cabarcas "would say with a malevolent smile."

In this novel, Garcia Marquez depicts an old man (in his 90s) who never married in the process of falling in love one last time with a young woman (who is about to become a prostitute).

The old man has lived a life with many prostitutes. He appreciated many of them, but never really fell in love. So, as he is turning 90, he ask an old whorehouse owner (whose successful time is also long gone) to get him one last girl, this time a virgin, on which he will spend his entire salary. So she does, and when the old man gets to the meeting place, the girl is asleep, tired after a day of hard work, so he just contemplates her all night and leaves. The rest of the book tells the story of many such encounters between them in which nothing is spoken but much is felt on both sides.

Garcia Marquez is able to transport the reader into the mind of the old man, sharing his feelings and understanding his motives. This book can be compared to two others I believe -- Lolita (Nabokov) and No One Writes to the Colonel (by Marquez as well). The themes of Lolita are similar, especially the moral ambiguity of the story. The theme of an old man hoping and losing hope is very present in the Colonel book as well, which by the way, I think is Marquez's best.

The language romances you, woos you into the soul of a 90 year old man. He lives alone in an aging apartment in a city loved so much "for the purity of its light". He decides to celebrate his 90th birthday with a virgin whore. I was initially appalled by this concept yet Mr. Marquez is such a gifted and generous craftsman that I was soon falling in love with his unnamed character. It is a love story of the highest order. A story about the rejuvenating and eternal power of love. About never being too old to experience its joy.

The size of this book was perfect. Novellas are a dying breed but "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is a superb novella. A masterful little book that fits much into little.

A definate must read.

A quick and very enjoyable read, though I would not put this book among the author's best work. It has some of the tenderness and whimsy of his masterpiece "Love in the Time of Cholera" but feels a bit cursory and perhaps a bit predictable if you are familiar with GG Marquez's work, though without the wild flights of imagination of "100 Years of Solitude."

I won't bother with a plot synopsis since that's what most of the other reviewers have done already, but will say that if you have never read Marquez before, you are likely to be impressed by this book much more than I was.

The book is written in the first person's voice. The protagonist on his 90th birthday falls madly in love with a 13 year old girl turning into 14. Knowing Garcia-Marquez' mastery in story telling, I had been willing to neglect the implausible setup -- I waited for the moment when Garcia-Marquez would lift me up from doubt and deliver his affirmation of life. That moment never arrived.

In fact not only was it difficult to comprehend why the protagonist fell as he did, it was also impossible to tell whether he had a relationship with the little girl at all. All he does is lay next and observe the girl while she is asleep:

"Later, for no reason at all, she rolled over in bed, turned her back to me, and said in vexation: It was Isabel who made the snails cry. Excited by the hope of a dialogue, I asked in the same tone: Whose were they? She didn't answer. Her voice had a plebian touch, as if it belonged not to her but to someone else she carried inside. That was when the last shadow of doubt disappeared from my soul: I preferred her asleep."

Even the hopeful, forward-looking narration at the end of the story by the protagonist does little to salvage the lack of convincing characters in the book. I am curious why Garcia-Marquez had chosen to publish the novella.

I picked this up at the Vegas airport while waiting for my flight. I am a huge fan of Marquez's style of painting vibrant pictures with the simplest of characters. And it has been a while (10 years) since Marquez's last work of fiction came out. So I had no hesitation in picking it up. Also the fact that it was a novella, made it an ideal candidate for flight reading.

First things first. The plot of this book may seem creepy to some. A 90 year old bachelor (not a virgin) deciding to have celebrate his birthday with an adolescent virgin is not exactly a picture of celestial romance. Some may even feel that it is in bad taste.

But I did manage to look beyond that aspect as I read the book.

The book reveals a central character who is fragile physically due to age and probably fragile of mind too. Time seems to have caused atleast a few fissures. This man (who is never named) has never loved, has a near-marriage and all the women he slept with were paid for their 'services'.

At this point I was finding it difficult to decide whether to sympathize with this man for whom death looms ahead or to just reject him outright as a womanizer. I was unable to do both. Probably because as a reader one's duty is not to judge a character but merely observe.

Well, there were shades of the Marquez that we are so familiar with. A poignancy expressed in a very subtle fashion, a hint of highly refined erotica and beautiful imagery.

But does that make a good book ? For me atleast it doesn't. It seemed a bit too laborious and at times pointless. Maybe it was meant to be that way. Finding love when you are at the doorsteps of death, may make your life seem pointless no matter how big your accomplishments are.

Maybe I am so accustomed to the beautiful tapestry of events in Marquez classics like the '100 years of solitude' ? Maybe that is why I felt a bit let down.

So my final verdict ? A good read for die hard Marquez fans. For someone starting out, I wouldn't recommend this as an appetizer for the feast which Marquez is capable of.

A 90-year decides to celebrate his birthday by having a night with a very young girl in a brothel. Instead he falls in love with her. An audacious story turns tender. The book’s 115 pages can be read at a sitting but I don’t think it is up to the standards of Marquez’s other great works for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

Oh Marquez, your arrow never misses. I knocked out this brilliant book in about an hour, and then I was sad. It is the novella telling of a life-long bachelor journalist who, the night before his 90th bday, decides he wants to sleep with a virgin in order to regain youth, understand life, and go out with a bang. Thing is, the madam at the whorehouse gives the virgin (let's call her V) some meds to edge down the nervousness, and V sleeps straight on 'til morning. Still, the journalist falls in love with V, and it's really better this way. For the first time, the man is in love. His articles sing with joy, his aching legs suddenly love to bicycle, and life just makes sense in the way that falling in love makes no sense at all. The world becomes beautiful and new. It's heartbreaking, it's perfect, it's Marquez. It really doesn't get any better. Marquez is the greatest writer alive today.

The title of my review basically tells exactly how I feel about this work. The writing (and the translation) is simply beautiful, and it's of such a length that it will take about 2 hours of your time to read. These 2 hours will not be wasted, I assure you, for you will read words written by a modern master of literature. The plot is quite simple, and often not even necessary, for the language and the writing carries this book from beginning to end. I only wish that the book were longer so that I could spend more time with a very delightful elderly man.

If someone is buying this book for erotica , they are in for a big surpise , its far from it.

I am not sure how to comment on this book, there is so less written , yet it conveys so much. You see the world through a 90 year old man who falls in love with a 14 year old prostitute. Its not sleaze either.The fact there so much age difference between the two would seem a bit sick to most people but its not sick at all. For some reason ,perhaps the main character has more time on his hand or perhaps its just fate, he looks at the female form as he should have seen it 70 years ago........he looks at the opposite sex with a desire that trangresses everything , even sex and this discovery brings him joy , happiness. It seems as though he is more in love with the idea that he is love than in love with the girl herself. Like the rest of the book , the ending is pleasent.You'd be surpised that even with his interaction with prostitutes all his life , one can appreciate his respect for women,

Any person who is in ( or has been ) in love will appreciate this book the most. I, myself , am in perpeptual love with the most beautiful girl named M. Its very hard to decrib what love is , but one sure does know when he / she is in love. And I can say only one thing, that this novella is about love.

It is said that only the French are capable of writing novella's. But this auhor has written one of the most wonderful novella's of our period. It seems that Latin Ameircan authors are more close to Asian writers and after reading a few books , i wonder if South Ameirca is more Eastern or Western ? The values in a lot of ways resemble eastern values.

Read it if if you want to understand more about love.

I am in my 20's, somehow I can still connect myself to author's identification of love. The book sort of describes how we define love through ages. The process of identifying, discovering, experiencing love is always magical at any age. One must not die without experiencing the wonder of having sex with love. The main character is so intriguing and stubborn with his style and opinions. One can be in love at any age in any given time as long as one believes in it.

I always wonder what happened to the murderer. Beware of an old cat. I don't want to spoil the story for you, enjoy! I finished the book in two nights.

One of his most beautiful stories. It's so sad that there will be no more - He died in 2014. He had the wonderful ability to
transport you to his world. I recommend this book to the young, middle aged and the elderly.

This is a swift, sweet read. The urgency of the narration moves ahead almost breathlessly. The 90-year-old narrator has "begun to count minute by minute the minutes of the nights I had left before I died," and repeatedly announces his intentions with the phrase "Today's the day" as if there might be no others left.

The preposterous premise - an old man falls in love with a young virgin whom he has never seen awake - does not stand in the way of genuine insights into human nature. The old man is not so much in love with the girl as he is with his own new-found capacity to care for another human being, for he has never been in love in all his 90 years. Despite his vast sexual experience, he is in some ways as virginal as the object of his affection. He has lived his whole life in his parents' house, worked at the same job since he was a young man, and never had sex he didn't pay for. His procurer tells him, "The only Virgos left in the world are people like you who were born in August."

The love he feels for the young girl, his first love, is almost indistinguishable from the love a parent feels for a child. He lingers over her sleeping form. His observation is intimate but not exactly lustful: "Blood circulated through her veins with the fluidity of a song that branched off into the most hidden areas of her body and returned to her heart, purified by love."

Even in translation, the writing is poetic. I raced through my first reading, but paused to linger over beautiful phrases. This is a book that can be read again and again.

This book has some similarities to Yasunari Kawabata's short novel The House Of The Sleeping Beauties, which Marquez even quotes in the epigraph. Kawabata's book is about an old man who watches sleeping young women and feels himself overwhelmed by desire for them. Marquez's book is about an even older man who first desires a sleeping young woman, and then feels himself overwhelmed by platonic love. Thus, Marquez inverts Kawabata's painful yearning into a sentimental fantasy.

And of course he replaces Kawabata's old man with the typical Marquez protagonist. Marquez protagonists are men who invariably possess amazing virility, miraculous longevity, and larger-than-life charisma. They are never good-looking, but they can always get any woman they want. In this book, the protagonist explains that he had been with 514 different women by the age of fifty. It is also typical for Marquez to give the exact number. It's not enough for his character to have had great success with the ladies, he has to have had exactly 514 of them. Marquez did this exact thing in Love In The Time Of Cholera, where his character filled some similarly huge number of notebooks with descriptions of his romantic conquests.

It is even more typical that the man is ninety years old. Marquez poetizes old age more than any other novelist I can think of. His protagonists are all eighty, ninety, or seven hundred, as in Autumn Of The Patriarch. Marquez always glosses over their youth and hurries to their old age, when they are always at their peak as lovers, artists, or villains.

Every single one of Marquez's major works, including One Hundred Years Of Solitude, repeats these tropes. Now Marquez is just coasting on them. For instance, in Kawabata's novel, the old man's desire gives him occasion to vividly remember some romantic encounters from his youth. Marquez does not do this, because he is not interested in his character's youth. The title of the book is misleading. It contains almost no memories. Marquez just states that his protagonist has only been with prostitutes. In this connection, he remembers a few names and anecdotes, but they do not seem to have affected him much.

The female lead is a total blank. Deliberately so. She has no lines in the whole book. Marquez states that she has a difficult job in a sweat-shop, but this does not interest him or his protagonist very much. Even Kawabata's sleeping beauties had more personality, because Kawabata described their body language. And Marquez's heroine is even awake sometimes!

Marquez does introduce a strong woman in the person of the brothel madam, but she's likewise a stamp, a stock character. How do I know she's strong? Because she haggles over prices and says vulgar things. And some people get murdered in her brothel. That is all.

The book runs on such stock characterization. The protagonist writes a weekly newspaper column. When he falls in love, he uses his column as a vehicle for his love letters. Thus, he composes a passionate love letter every week, and all his readers go wild with emotion and admiration. Hey, that's exactly like Florentino Ariza in Love In The Time Of Cholera! He also likes to listen to music. I don't really know why he likes music so much, but I do know the names of the composers he likes, because Marquez replaces the one with the other. Instead of Kawabata's elegant rumination, Marquez has cheap, casual vulgarity, like the bit about the protagonist's, uh, rectal pain.

Which brings me to the point that, unlike Kawabata's book, this one is not sensual at all. Which, I'm sure you'll agree, is a big drawback for a book about sensuality. Marquez has been describing old men for so long that he appears to have forgotten how to describe young women. Actually he has no interest in describing them. Even though Delgadina's sole function is as an object of fantasy, the book's description of her is very short and cursory. Marquez describes her clothes more than her appearance. And she has no lines, so it's not like he loves her for her mind.

I should also note that, while Marquez's earlier works evoked the turbulence of Latin American politics (like the description of the massacre in One Hundred Years Of Solitude), this book is not concerned with any of that in the least. Now politics are just a kind of gentleman's game. There is a conservative newspaper and a liberal newspaper, and their correspondents fraternize with each other, and it's all in good fun and none of it has any effect on anyone's life. Least of all on the protagonist's, which revolves only around a fancy for Delgadina. The protagonist states that he is poor, but it sure doesn't look like that from the description. There is absolutely no danger in his life, and so the fact that his sweetheart works in a sweat-shop is trivial to him.

Basically Marquez says nothing here that he hasn't said many times in the past. Maybe, if one has written one novel that is widely considered to be a masterpiece, one doesn't really have to prove oneself anymore. But it would be nice if one at least tried.

I used to speculate that the novella was Gabriel Garcia Marquez's natural forum -- but after reading Memories of My Melancholy [...]I have my doubts.

Unlike novellas such as Chronicle of a Death Foretold, No One Writes to the Colonel, and Of Love and Other Demons, the author's unique talent for arching and vast narratives that move freely in time is confined here, and Mr. Garcia Marquez's imagination never quite seems to take flight. And I don't think the story would have been improved by lengthening it: it seems like it would be a better fit as a sub-plot in a more ambitious work than as a tale asked to stand on its own.

I admit that on some level, I probably raise the bar a little when it comes to evaluating the work of Mr. Garcia Marquez, who I count among my favorite writers. But as I read this slim but handsome volume, I couldn't escape the feeling that the author may have been going through the motions as he wrote this. The story almost seemed like a parody of Mr. Garcia Marquez's best works, especially Love in the Time of Cholera, which similarly explored the concept of love in its various and unlikely forms.

With Memories of My Melancholy [...], the love develops in the imagination of the book's 90-year-old protagonist, who for the first time in his life allows himself to truely care for someone: a 14-year-old virgin and would-be prostitute who he never deflowers, never speaks to, and never even sees awake.

This is not a book about sex, as some reviewers assert, and so the inevitable comparisons with Lolita are off the mark. But almost as mistaken are the reviews that call this great literature, for we never really understand the main character's motives. Why did he choose to live such a libertine but lonely existence? Why are his own examinations of his life reduced to pat phrases like wanting to "die alone, in the same bed in which [he] was born" and boasting of having "never gone to bed with a woman [he] didn't pay"?

At first glance, the story does seem to be about sex, which is obviously inaccurate. At other points, it seems be about love, loneliness, morals, or old age. But what I think it is really about is obsession, and as such it is ultimately unsatisfying because we don't really understand the character with the obsession.

All these criticisms are relative, of course. The book still offers Mr. Garcia Marquez's familiar and reassuring story telling style and delicate language, and it again brings us back to the fascinating world of rural Columbia as Mr. Garcia Marquez imagines or remembers it. Translator Edith Grossman does another magnificent job rendering flowery and literary Spanish into highly readable English nonetheless faithful to the original. But the watered-down storyline, the unconvincing protagonist, and the contrived and banal ending would have been unthinkable in Mr. Garcia Marquez's prime, and even in the twilight of his career they are unworthy of his glorious talents.

Nobel-prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez returns to the literary scene with another great novel: a story about a man who decides to sleep with an adolescent virgin for his ninetieth birthday. A journalist by trade, his other preoccupation is women:

"I have never gone to bed with a woman I didn't pay ... by the time I was fifty there were 514 women with whom I had been at least once".

The woman he meets at his favorite whore-house in a city somewhere in Columbia is a 14-year old beauty who works at a button-stitching factory during the day. He quickly becomes infatuated with her and makes arrangements with the Madame of the house to continue seeing her. It is his passion for her that makes him reflect upon his ninety years:

"The house rose from its ashes and I sailed on my love of Delgadina with an intensity and happiness I had never known in my former life. Thanks to her I confronted my inner self for the first time as my ninetieth year went by. I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about people's time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac."

Despite the title, this is what the story is really about: contemplating his past. As he does so, we get a glimpse into the life of an old man and the culture of Columbia. Some readers only familiar with American and Western European cultures may consider the novel downright appalling, but most readers with a global perspective (the minimum legal age of marriage for females in most Latin American countries is between 12 and 14) will appreciate Marquez' masterful storytelling and keen insight into the human psyche that makes Memories of My Melancholy Whores a worthwhile read.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, after a ten year span, shows once more that he is among the greatest living writers. Call the book a novel, a novella, a long short story; it's irrelevant. What matters, and what shows his genuis, is that he has done in 115 pages, something others try to achieve in four or five times that number.

This beautiful tale of unplanned self redemption, written in short incisive sentences and with gentle humor, in his languid form of Magical Realism, magages to convey all the pleasure one could wish for, in this eloquent tale of love awakened, albeit at age 90.

An unnamed man has feeling for nothing and no one, himself least of all. He has lived a life of self determined solitude. Although a talented columnist whose work is admired, he turns it out without thinking about its meaning. He has, in his intensely private life, but two interests. First is Music; Second are whores. He has kept a meticulous journal, containing the names of each women he has had, but lost interest and stopped after the number exceeded 500. The women have no more meaning to him than his toaster or his phonograph. They provide him the need of a bodily function. He boasts to himself that he has never in his life, slept with a woman, without paying her for service. For him, you see, it's a matter of honor.

Now facing his ninetieth birthday, his thoughts dwell on the inevitable finale. Trying to placate his fears, he concocts a plan. His birthday present to himself will to find and pay, for sex with a Virgin. No small accomplishment.

He proposes his plan to his accomplice Roas Cabarcas, an old bordello madam, as near to being a friend as he has known.

The plan works well, until he arrives to find the young girl in a deep sleep. To allay her fears, Rosa has given her a sedative, just a bit too much however. His efforts to waken her fail, and with frustration he falls asleep next to her. When he awakes the next morning, something has changed.

He, Rosa, and the honorable young girl are determined to put things right. So begins his transformation, ending in the pure and beautiful knowledge, that love, even acquired at the age of ninety, now makes him happily (For the first time in his life) look forward to his 100th birthday.

Read this tiny gem at one sitting, then wait for the pleasure of re reading it often.

"Viva" Marquez

This novella takes you on a journey into the mind of an old man as he recounts his life and his present experiences as well, before and after his 90th personal birthday celebration. He falls in love with a 14 yr old prostitute, something he's not accustomed to doing, and eventually finding himself completely obsessed with her. Where this takes the old man as he meanders down the path of life's surprises is part of the fascination of this story.

Marquez has a way of drawing the reader through the narrative of his character. It allows the reader to anticipate and experience as the old man seeks, contemplates, and discovers personal treasures of his life.

This book has all the great qualities of a classic short story

I've heard many bad reviews of this book, but I absolutely adored it. For his ninetieth birthday, an unnamed journalist decides to buy himself a virgin prostitute. I think this single act in the first chapter may be offputting to a lot of people who don't move beyond the moral implications. Further into the story it becomes a very interesting look at aging, lust, how we percieve ourselves, "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."

Rosa Cabarcas is a fascinating character. A woman who is found a niche for herself of power and wit in a world where there are few opportunities for her. At the same time that she is doing something that should be frowned upon, her empathy and will is admirable.

Finally at ninety years old the main character lets go of lust and sees the power of loving appreciation.

The pitfalls of consumerism: I had bought expensive tickets for uncomfortable seats in a concert of Lorin Maazel and his NY big band. They gave me Rossini, Mozart, and Brahms, and all was nice and as expected, and that was highly unsatisfactory, because we want to have our expectations exceeded.
So I went home grumbling and picked up this little book from my daughter's bookshelf. And then GGM made things right for me. Far better than expected. Not just the colorful tale of a macho braggard that the title might suggest. Rather something like a retrospective bucket list. Lots of enchanting observations on age.
'My notion of youth was so flexible I never thought it was too late.' Let's buy him a ticket to the Nicholson movie.
'I was tormented by the little daemon who whispers into our ear the devastating replies that we didn't give.' See: that's the advantage of the store, we can change our statements.
For some of my AFs: there is a cat in the story, and lots of music!
And by the way, the Noble committee did get it right once in a while.

There are few who have mastered the novella quite like Marquez. It would be a mistake to think or expect this book to be like Cien Anos or his other known work, because it is an unique expression of his creative talents.

Memories of My melancholy whores commences with a request by an 90 year old man for a young prostitute for a night of wild passionate love, and ends with the rejuvenation and almost even resurrection of the narrator at his 100th birthday. Through the book we bear witness of how a once undistinguished journalist and lifelong bachelor-get transformed into someone who can "enjoy the contours of a joyous dawn.

In 128 pages we see how even in realm of a brothel and prostitution we can find beauty and a reawakening of life in us. The mean through which this is made a reality for the unnamed protagonist is through this virgin whom he calls Deldadina and who he never has sex with but rather admires her as one does a work of art and she becomes the Muse in his life that teaches him about love without ever being consumed by him, that reawakens his soul from the loveless passionate life he has been leaving.

Technically in this book Marquez doesn't falter. The use of irony to allude to the slow transformation of the narrator, the subtle use of imagery and diction are also something to be noted, especially in such a small novel. Marquez's theme are here as well The role of woman in the life of man and society, the passage of time, the reciprocal influence that life and death have on each other. I would recommend this book very highly because despite its technically mastery, it is a wonderful uplifting story that calls into questions the meanings our habits and direction in life has in terms of a larger picture, well at least it did for me. Peace

Dave

It is rare that I enjoy pure narrative. The old man that is the protagonist views himself realistically, not as he would like to see himself or remember himself, but as he is and has been. It was that keen introspection that helped me to identify with him. Above all, Garcia shows his true powers of observation that echoes of Hemingway in this work, painting a picture so vivid that the reader is transported to another country, another time, and becomes the protagonist himself.

So I've had this book since it was first released. I read it once, enjoyed it and set it down. I learned some more about Marquez, I read more of his work, and came back to it. I'm not going to write a huge critique of the use of magical realism or anything like that. In fact I don't really care about all of that and neither should you. When it comes down to it, the book is enjoyable. It makes you smile, it keeps you wanting to know more. You feel for the old man. You feel his love and his pain. If you enjoy Marquez then you will enjoy this. Don't worry about if it's his best work. It's just his work. For a fan, that's all you need.

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......

This book by Marquez is wonderful in its brevity (many people get lost or give up on his more famous full length works) and its messages.

As long as a human being is lucid, he or she can experience the emotion of love. Love is more a visceral than a genital experience when it is real, and this book makes that point vividly using the extremes of both age and sexual experience to make it stand out in bas relief.

Second, in his recent work "The Sea", John Banville's protagonist makes the comment that in love, there is always "one who loves, and one who is loved". We fool ourselves to think otherwise - this has often been a central theme of Marquez's work, but has never been presented with the clarity of a hopeless metaphor as is the relationship between this 14 year old woman and this 90 year old man.

This is a man who many would call sad and wasted, but in the end, he is true to himself and the women who he has shared his time with over many years. I would say that this is one of the finest and truest depictions of a "monger" that I have ever read and it read true for me as a man. Well worth the read.

The first review I posted was that of 'the great gatsby', and now this.

A somewhat controversial story written in poetic prose and riddled with thought-stopping insights on life, on love and age which are as forceful as the underlying moral of the story is subtle. The only disappointment was the ending - not the ending itself but the fact that the book came to an end in under 130 pages of pure reading pleasure. The quotes listed in the other reviews here are in themselves beautiful, but don't do justice to the context in which they were used and adjacent paragraphs that they accompanied.

A great, gripping read that just whets the appetite and satisfies the senses with elegant sufficiency.

First of all, the fact is the average teenage prostitute is emotionally numb rather quickly. What we have here is a self-centered moron who uses a blank slate to masturbate about and to himself in a final ejacaluation of myopic self-congradulation. Not that there is anything wrong with that! But to pretend that anything else but a sheer disgusting horror is going on here is idiotic.

Second of all, where the work becomes brilliant, in my view, is when he meets with an old whore of his, and she pins him down in a rather banal fashion, which he surely deserves.

In the end, his ultimate sin is that he is rather boring. As he sees something of an end to a long life, he wishes to evangelize his fears of communion with another person on fully open terms by writing about love with what is both a new and a dead body (a sleeping girl), who is touched but untouchable (as though such simple paradoxes made great literature!).

It is ultimately a novel about masturbation, which is a good symbol of the finitude of old age, and its illusions of immortality and significance.

I rate it a three star because it is surely two levels worse than Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground.

If you loved García-Márquez's LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA you will love this slim little delightful novel by the master storyteller. CHOLERA, to my mind, is an encyclopedia of many varieties of erotic love. G-M's fascination with this powerful theme is always playful, irreverent, but joyfully uplifting.

In MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES, there is a character who will remind readers of America Vicuña in CHOLERA. G-M is now "pacing the tower of old age" (Yeats), and his handling of the theme of aging is superb. American writers should learn from this master novelist how to write short, beautiful novels.

A customarily fine translation by Edith Grossman.

Although is one of the shortest novels by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Memories of my Melancholy Whores is indeed a masterpiece which represents the consecration of the author among Latin-American and international writers.

The book tells the story of a gentleman who decides to celebrate his 90th birthday with one of his deepest passions: a virgin; and falls in a platonic love with her, spending many more nights in the picturesque brothel, watching her sleep. The girl is the purest image of innocence and yet has a long life of secrets trapped inside her.

The central characters are defined by their fears and their hopes, but mostly, like in many of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novels, by their deepest need for love. They are strangers, so far away from each other in terms of age and sexual expertise, but they are held together by a shared loneliness.

Much of the pleasure in Memories of my Melancholy Whores comes from the combination of the misfortunes of old age and the joy of being in love, which Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been able to portray with a very visual style and an excellent sense for dialogue, so characteristic from the Aracataca region of Colombia.

The book is a story of love, an ethereal feeling impossible to judge in an old man, who finally, at the age of ninety found love watching a virgin sleep.

Andrea Marvan

Vancouver, BC

This novel is another heartbreaking/inspiring tale from the Nobel Prize laureate. Although the story is told in under 120 pages, Marquez still utilizes his themes of solitude, age, contemplation and Spanish culture. Marquez tells the sad story from the perspective on a ninety-year-old narrator who has never been in love with anybody. Instead, he pays (often young) women to sleep with him. Although he has slept with over 500 women, he feels little accomplishment for his life due to the fact that he has never felt love. Once again, Marquez enhances his storytelling through his powerful and almost individual theme of solitude. If you are new to reading Marquez, I would recommend his short stories. They will take your breath away. "Eyes of a Blue Dog" is one of my favorites. Enjoy Marquez...He didn't win the Nobel Prize with his good looks; he won because his storytelling is magical, intricate, but somehow universal.

On the surface Gabo's "Memoria de mis putas tristes" (loosely translated as Memories of My Sad Whores) is a story about an old man who upon turning 90 decides to bed (or attempt to would be a better description) a 14-year-old prostitute who, upon entering the old man's room for the first time, promptly falls asleep. And it is at this time that the old man (unnamed) begins a reverie of his life and in particular of the many women he has bedded and for whose affections he has paid.

In barely over 100 pages, Gabo manages to squeeze in a chronicle of some 500 women: not finding Love with any of them. He says:"Sex is the consolation for not finding enough love."

Many will look at this novella as Gabo's attempt to write a piece that would be placed out of reach to anyone under 18 in the Public Library, alongside "The Tropic Of Cancer" or "Lady Chatterley's Lover." And Gabo would probably think that this would be the ultimate in Coolness. But, "Memoria" is much more than this. What it is is a tribute to all women and the mysteries of all things feminine. The Old Man pays for companionship yes, but he adores these women: they are his respite from Life, all that he craves and they fulfill something much more inside of him, than can the mere act of sex.

The Old man calls the 14-year-old virgin Delgadilla (or the little skinny one) and he lavishes her with gifts. Delgadilla becomes the Old Man's savior and avenging angel, for it is through her innocence and love that he is reborn as a writer and as a human being.

"Memoria de mis putas tristes" is Gabo at his most sensual. That these encounters he details are sometimes graphic and often times brutal does not deflect the sheer beauty and majesty of the writing or of this novella in general.

Marquez wraps a big theme into a small book here. Through our protagonist, we learn about aging and sex and death and the fear of life before we find, finally, love. The difficulty and complexity of the setting and the events we read about (poverty, prostitution, the child sex trade, etc.) show Marquez to be a master artist, capable of bringing sympathy and beauty out of anything and approach it all without fear.

We are readjusted completely to the point of view and social context of his aged protagonist and we find, as he does, idealized images of love and beauty hidden unexpectedly in these dark places. Marquez was not concerned about making social commentary, he was concerned about truly representing the soul of his character on the page.

He is certainly one of my favorite writers and unquestionably one of the worlds most gifted.

I am a great fan of Garcia Marquez. A tremendous writer. This book not only exceeded my expectations, but it was everything I did not expect it to be. A great love story. I am always reading, so for me I read it in 2 hours, but it left such an impression. Haven't met one person who disliked it.

I don't write reviews but I have read many of these as well as the negative NYT review. I am writing because I wonder why people feel compelled to react like critics rather than humans. I liked this book. It made me think. I liked To Have and Have Not, as well. Why must we compare each effort by a great writer to that writer's masterpiece? Don't we want our great writers to keep writing?

To me the book is about the surrender of ego, something we should all contemplate.

Well, what can I say. If you loved 100 yrs but found it a little tedious at times, you'll love this little gem. Short and to the point, this is Marquez at his best. You can easily finish it in 1 long afternoon, and you won't regret it. The old master is back, as good as ever.

Granted, I have not read those which are considered Marquez's "greatest" works, but I was not too engaged with this story. Certainly, there are some beautifully written passages, and you can clearly picture the narrative, but I found I did not feel one way or the other about the main character. I didn't understand his mission/motives, and found I neither pitied nor condemned his actions. Even so, if you're looking for a quick read (and despite much self-provoking to slow down, it went very, very quickly), it's not a bad story to have under your belt--just don't expect something revolutionary.

May be by quoting two sentences from Kawabata's "House of Sleeping Beauties" Marquez told us from where he got the inspiration. But this one is not so good as Sleeping Beauties. By trying to be different from the other, Marquez tried to give too details of the man's life which in effect is not with much effect. Compared to his earlier books this one well below expectation, in terms of story and style.

I was really dissapointed with this readable but mediocre piece of work from Garcia Marquez. Self-plagiarism is written all over it, the story just re-writes ideas already explored in his previous works. Seems he needed to publish something to fullfill a contract, not because he was inspired to write. Characters are dull and not believable, all relationships are shallow. At the end, the book left me with pity for the main character, a 90 year old pedophile who confused infatuation with love.

Not only is the my all time favorite Garcia Marquez book, it's one of my most favorite books ever. I've read several of his books and this one was especially good. So beautifully written, I got totally lost in it and couldn't put it down till I was done!

I have to admit, it was the title that drew me to this book, and I couldn't be happier that I decided to read it. This being my first Marquez novel, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but now I know: I'm infatuated. There is a melancholy, a beauty, behind this book that is at once insightful and fresh, like the contrast between inner and outer age. It hit me at a level where no other book has, and has given me back my faith in love. Five stars does little justice to the degree of commendation I have for Marquez and his novel.

I do not want to be too harsh because I admire his talent. I wish I had never read this book. Great novelists, like Mr. Marquez, have the power of portraying eccentric, volatile yet real essence of life with pure, ordinary elements of everyday routine. One feels enriched upon reading such masterpieces. This book did the opposite. It gives a dull message using fantastic set of events and cartoonish characters. The message is forced and everything is patched together to poorly fulfill the minimal requirement of coherence. It is alienating to the reader. For example, Rosa Cabarcas character portrays more saint-like sister than a vicious veteran madam. There are pages one even senses a juvenile urgency to insert isolated pieces before the book ends.

I do not know why Mr. Marquez thought this is a finished work ready to be read by the public.

This short book, really a short story, reinforced my conviction that Marquez is my all time favorite author. Totally enjoyable, a wonderful use of language, and a depth of character. I will read anything that this guy writes. 100 Years of Solitude is still my favorite.

This short work of fiction was fantastic. A bit horrific to think of all the books dealing with older men yearning for such young flesh (i.e lolita) but the truth in the words is non-the-less breathtaking.

This book is not up to the level of any other major work by Marquez. Characters are mechanical, the main protagonist appears to be one dimensional and boring, and there is no excitement in this book. More importantly it is difficult to feel any empathy towards any of the characters.

I will just echo the other assessments of Garcia Marquez's latest book. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Wonderfully rendered passages and that almost spiritual quality of his writing relay the story of a man looking back at the loves and conquests of his life with real depth and humanity.

Be forewarned that the book is very slight, but you will relish every page.

Gabo has done it once again.This book is going to be discussed ,reviewed and re-reviewed during the years to come.........it is all set to be another classic by one of the literary giants of the century.The main theme of the story is the triumph of life over death.The indomitable spirit of human life, call it libido if you want,and its victory over death through love and lust makes the appeal of this novella universal and timeless.

The book is a must-read. It gives you an inside look at the life of a man in his 90's. It reveals his thoughts, his young soul and his dreams. This book brings back, the meaning of love. Also, it shows that everything is possible in love; that even a man in his 90's can find love and be happy in his last years. It was wonderful and I enjoyed reading it.

Only 117 pages but tough to read…The story wasn’t nearly as good as the title.

It was a terrible little book about a perverted 90-year old man obsessed with a 15-year old virgin. He even thought it love rather than pedophilia.

It’s not quite clear whether he did anything other than ogle her, but suffices it to say, it was a creepy entanglement.

I hated the premise of this book and still do -- very old man with very young prostitute. But I couldn't put it down. Garcia Marquez is adept at making us see the beauty in all aspects of human existence and this story is no exception. He continues to be my favorite author.

One cannot read Melancholy Whores without thinking of Dylan Thomas' famous poem...Our ninety year old is only ninety in body and years not in spirit...How and why does that work? That it works for Gabriel Garcia Marquez's nonagenarian should be a great illumination for all of us under ninety.

I feel like I have been cheated of a beautiful, Sunday, albeit cold and snowing afternoon. I am a big fan of Marquez but this book has hints that he wrote this, but only that. The characters are not well developed, I am not sure where the plot resides? At times, the writer seems to ramble on about nothing. I wonder why he wrote this garbage! I felt like I paid for a Pulitzer Prize winner and what I got is a middle school S.A. I believe that Marquez has lost his mind or he did not write this story at all.

Although beautifully written, I found the protagonist just too unlikeable. I should have guessed by the title that I wouldn't like this book, but had high hopes since I absolutely loved his other novels.

Disappointing. Apparently not Marquez' masterpiece. Not enough about [...], too much about music, aging, bicycle, and a lugubrious pimp. And apparently not enough melancholy either. Contrary to other readers, the subject matter does not disturb me, albeit difficult. In fact, the novella would be a hazardously illuminating literary feat if the narrator follows through with the protagonist's unflinching sexual appetite (in other words, failure to consummate) from the very beginning...rather twisting his pillars of yearning into some rambling barren sentimental crap.

I'm amazed, and dismayed, that among all the reviews, both positive and negative, I found not a word about what I thought most troubling, and reprehensible, in this novel. Not a word about the devastating poverty that had led this young girl to prostitute herself to an old man in order to help her family. She is the figure for whom we ought to be concerned. Instead, there's not a word of sympathy for her plight or that of the hundreds of others whose bodies this John has bought. Instead we are supposed to feel empathy for, and share in the joy of, this old lecher as he drugs and uses a young girl (and many before her) in pursuit of a weird sort of attachment. The only authentic moment in the book is when the old pederast meets a prostitute from his past, with whom he thought he had a special relationship, and she has no clue who he even is. If there ever was a book written purely from a macho, misogynist perspective, this is it.

I have never written an the store review before, but I'm utterly incredulous that anyone could give this awful book five stars.

This book is terrible. This is just a bunch of meandering gibberish about a geriatric fool who falls in "love" with a child who he has no interaction with. It is utterly unbelievable, nonsensical and uninteresting.

Perhaps it's what I do for a living, I'm a psychotherapist. This book was a disappointment to me. The whining of a dsyfunctional geriatric male. To call what he experienced "love" is quite dsyfunctional. There is no "love" Do you call that a "relationship?" I am not sure what this book was- but it was rather misogynist.

If this tick of a book had been written by anybody other than a Nobel Prize winner, it wouldn't have been published, nor liked. It's not believable nor is it unbelievable. It just stinks.

Some old coot--cold, whore-crazed--wants a night with a virgin. I was hoping she'd wake up at some point and give him what he wanted--and it would kill him right away.

So where's the romance with a pedophile?