Translator: Edith
Grossman
Genre: Romance/Fiction
Date of Publication: October
25th, 2005
Memorable Quotation: “From
then on I had her in my memory with so much clarity that I could do what I wanted
with her. I changed the color of her eyes according to my state of mind: the
color of water when she woke, the color of syrup when she laughed, the color
of light when she was annoyed…” (pg. 60)
Lasting Impression: The pace was not great, the storyline lost
its gust towards the end, but experiencing the thoughts and emotions of a ninety-year
old man falling in love for the first time brings a new and bold flavor to the
stereotypical love story.
Storyline: B+
Pace of Story: B-
Characters: A-
Ending: C
Overall Grade: B-
Memories of My Melancholy Whores evokes a new sense of the love
story everyone knows: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy fights for girl, boy
and girl end up together. The end. Although
that is basically the premise, the opening line of the novel blows the ordinary
love story out of the water: “The year I
turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an
adolescent virgin.” Although this is
what our protagonist intended, it was not what he received. Instead of a night of wild love, he received
a year of actual love with a woman, a girl of only fourteen to whom he only saw
when she was asleep due to her exhausting factory job. As his love for Delgadina (his special name
for her) enraptures his heart, circumstances threaten to take away his sleeping
beauty and only with a mixture of patience and perseverance will he be able to
find her.
This was another book I read upon
a recommendation from a friend but unlike The
Killing Room, this novel underwhelmed me. I found it difficult to critique a literary
legend such as Márquez but since not everything can be liked by everyone, I say
this was not my favorite novel of his. I liked the concept (looking past the
tremendous gap in years between the lovers) but the execution throughout most
of the book was poor.
Here were my problems with the execution: There were no breaks in the pages or quotation marks to show where
the dialogue began and ended (making it hard to follow), the storyline (although starting off strong) became shaky after the middle of the novel because of the inconsistent nature of facts I was given, and lastly, the ending
did not bring much closure to anything. Despite all of that, I still enjoyed
the book enough to finish it.
What kept me reading was my intrigue in the overall concept
and the curiosity of where the lovers would end up. The man’s
love for Delgadina was described beautifully, making me feel his love in my
heart as he went through the motions of giving her gifts and decorating for her. It was amazing to think how after 90 years of never feeling anything but lust for a woman, he felt this pure, genuine love bottled up inside of him, waiting for the right person
to come along to express to her, and that alone made this Memories of My Melancholy Whores special.
Although I was not a big fan of this novel, I can appreciate
the message Gabriel García Márquez had imbued into this novel. It is powerful and may not be fully accepted by everyone but it is something everyone needs to hear. His message is that it does not
matter how old you are or where you are from, the soul has no age or definition
(look at A in Every Day) and although
we define ourselves by the age of our bodies, sometimes love can transcend the
gap and show us that our souls are all connected.
~Shelly-Beans
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