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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 863.64
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 128
Publication Date: October 25, 2005
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: October 25, 2005
Sales Rank: 430878
Studio: Knopf
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
"The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin." So begins Memories of My Melancholy Whores, and it becomes even more unlikely as the novel unfolds. This slim volume contains the story of the sad life of an unnamed, only slightly talented Colombian journalist and teacher, never married, never in love, living in the crumbling family manse. He calls Rosa Cabarcas, madame of the city's most successful brothel, to seek her assistance. Rosa tells him his wish is impossible--and then calls right back to say that she has found the perfect girl.
The protagonist says of himself: "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 ... My public life, on the other hand, was lacking in interest: both parents dead, a bachelor without a future, a mediocre journalist ... and a favorite of caricaturists because of my exemplary ugliness."
The girl is 14 and works all day in a factory attaching buttons in order to provide for her family. Rosa gives her a combination of bromide and valerian to drink to calm her nerves, and when the prospective lover arrives, she is sound asleep. Now the story really begins. The nonagenarian is not a sex-starved adventurer; he is a tender voyeur. Throughout his 90th year, he continues to meet the girl and watch her sleep. He says, "This was something new for me. I was ignorant of the arts of seduction and had always chosen my brides for a night at random, more for their price than their charms, and we had made love without love, half-dressed most of the time and always in the dark, so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were ... That night I discovered the improbably pleasure of contemplating the body of a sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the obstacles of modesty."
Márquez's style never falters throughout this recounting of his life and his exploration of love, found at an unexpected time and place. The erstwhile lover is still capable of being surprised--and fulfilled. After an absence of ten years, it is a treat to have another parable from the master. --Valerie Ryan
Average Rating: 
Rating: -
A book about the desires of an older man and the reflection of is own life.
Rating:  -
Made In Hero
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 ... Read More
Rating:  -
The protagonist of this book mentions a Latin quote: "No old man forgets where he has hidden his treasure" Well....in this case it seems that Marquez has forgotten exactly that: the place where he has hidden his superb skills as a narrator of fascinating, magic realistic stories.
The novel is a shallow, disappointing story about a 90 years old bachelor and his love for a teenage virgin he likes to watch while she sleeps. The magic atmosphere of the small South American city which is Marquez forte ... Read More
Rating: -
Many men create fantasmical ideas of malleable women to either charge their fantasy lives or as a diversion from harsh realities. This myth of the woman perpetually "ready and willing to do anything for love" lives on in pornography, the beauty industry, and mainstream culture - not to mention in the minds of men. Alfred Hitchcock explored it in "Vertigo" as did Nabokov in "Lolita." Some years later, Gabriel García Márquez explored this same theme, with possible Hitchcockian inspiration, in "Memories ... Read More
Rating: -
This is a very fine novella. It is spiced with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's sly humor and timeless and yet uniquely expressed wisdom. It is so well written that I found myself speeding through it, finishing it in less than 3 hours. Because of the seamless narrative flow and compelling voice of the 90 year old narrator it is easy to read this book a bit too fast. Marquez is an incredible master of the written word as this parable illustrates. Edith Grossman, the translator, is a talented woman.
I ... Read More
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