Memories of my Melancholy Whores

Read from Saturday, September 3rd to Monday, September 5th.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  In this short novella, his most recent work, Marquez tells the simple story of a man who, on his 90th birthday, falls in love with a young, fourteen year old virgin, Delgadina.  The man, a lifelong reporter, has been with hundreds of prostitutes over the course of his long life, and he has never fallen in love.  An average man, he sticks with the newspaper out of loyalty.

On his 90th birthday, he asks the local madam for a virgin, and that is no easy task for her.  She finds Delgadina though, a young factory worker looking to help out her family.  On that first night, she is given drugs to make her sleep, and the man simply watches her while she sleeps.  He falls quickly and madly in love for the first time in his life, and he constructs an elaborate relationship out of those many nights they spend in the exact same fashion.  He reads to her while she sleeps, he gently caresses her, he imagines her in his house and out on the street.  She is everything to him that he can imagine, and then he imagines the worst.  He flies into a jealous rage when she and the madam disappear for a few weeks after a murder at the brothel.  He believes she is out with other men, but finally they return, and are reunited, for Delgadina has grown in love with the old man as well.

Marquez uses the relationship with the young girl as a chance for the man to reflect upon his own life.  All the mistakes he made, the women he had been with (all of them he had to pay in one way or another), and the nature of old age in general.  It is a quick story, without too much plot development, and unfortunately not much character development either.  The old man is often left unexplained and flat.  It was a light, quick read, but not one of my favorites by Marquez.  Three out of five stars.