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Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Paperback)
Autor (Libros): Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Páginas:
128
- Precio de lista:
- U.S.$12.95
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- U.S.$9.32 Tipo de cambio
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- 28%
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Características
* ISBN13: 9781400095940
* Condition: New
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Amazon.com Review
"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
Product Description
A New York Times Notable Book
On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit–he has purchased hundreds of women–he asks a madam for her assistance. The fourteen-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with this sleeping beauty at his side, it is he who awakens to a romance he has never known.
Tender, knowing, and slyly comic, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is an exquisite addition to the master’s work.
On the eve of his ninetieth birthday a bachelor decides to give himself a wild night of love with a virgin. As is his habit–he has purchased hundreds of women–he asks a madam for her assistance. The fourteen-year-old girl who is procured for him is enchanting, but exhausted as she is from caring for siblings and her job sewing buttons, she can do little but sleep. Yet with this sleeping beauty at his side, it is he who awakens to a romance he has never known.
Tender, knowing, and slyly comic, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is an exquisite addition to the master’s work.
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0 de 0 votos han sido útiles para otras personas:
curious, lyrical, heartfelt, 2010-06-07
Por lisa shea(the little reader)
this was my second Gabriel Garcia Marquez book, the first being the well known One Hundred Years of Solitude, which i loved so much that it made my Top Picks list. Memories of My Melancholy Whores, although written with similar language, is more of a novella (only 128 pages) and doesn't have nearly the same breadth of scope as One Hundred Years and has a rather curious plot and set of characters. i did enjoy it and it certainly has its merits, but it is understandably not a book for everyone.
the story focuses on a bachelor on the eve of his 90th birthday. having only ever had sex with prostitutes and in proper celebration, he calls upon the Madam Rosa Cabarcas to find a virgin for him. she does this, securing him a 14 year old girl whom he names Delgadina. once with her, the impending sexual encounter doesn't occur, but rather he longingly admires her and falls asleep. the ensuing year long "relationship" with the young prostitute, in addition to costing a fortune, brings our narrator a happiness he has never known. having never found love and never known joy in life, Delgadina awakens in him something new and causes much reflection on our narrators part, on aging, life, love, death, and naturally, sex.
"Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love."
the relationship is a curious one, with little to no dialogue and a rather perverse sense of intimacy, much like their first encounter that is absent of sex. but, his love for her makes brings an honor and genuineness to him that is admirable. as a seasoned journalist, our narrator has a witty sense of humor and i found his reflections on aging particularly hilarious, with his reflections on love heartfelt. though it is odd to imagine the relationship between our narrator and Delgadina (and he does spend quite a bit of time lamenting on her naked form), i never really was all that bothered by the book. it was written with the intention of examining beauty and love and it does that ever so well.
i think the best part of this book, as with One Hundred Years was the language. Marquez just has that lovely, lyrical way of making the most mundane scenes sounds magical and this was no exception.
"When the cathedral bells struck seven, there was a single, limpid star in the rose-colored sky, a ship called out a disconsolate farewell, and in my throat I felt the Gordian knot of all the loves that might have been and weren't."
though i was not blown away, i did enjoy this and would recommend it as a nice, short read for anyone interested in the beautiful shape that words can take. however, if the idea of a 90 year old man with a 14 year old virgin upsets you, this might not be the right book for you, because it is central and crucial to the flow of the book.
0 de 0 votos han sido útiles para otras personas:
An interesting plot gone wrong, 2010-05-16
Por Melissa Niksic
"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.
0 de 0 votos han sido útiles para otras personas:
An aging man's reflections on life, love, and intimacy, 2010-01-02
Por Robert Moore
This short novel has the distinction of being the least brilliant of the several works by Garcia Marquez that I have read. From the title one might imagination that the contents were sexual and highly salacious, but in truth the title does not suggest what is actually in the book. The events surround a ninety-year-old man, the writer of a Sunday column for the local newspaper, decides to hire a virgin prostitute for his birthday. That is as naughty as the book gets. But the writer unexpectedly comes to care for a young girl with whom he doesn't even consummate a relationship. One gets the the impression that the narrator is incapable of easy intimacy, has in fact failed to cultivate the personal skills that would enable him to care for someone other than himself on a personal level. When the office of the newspaper at which he works throws a party for him, he is given an elderly cat. He is completely unable to care for it and even gets a book that gives him instructions on caring for the cat. He lacks the instincts to take care of it, but instead continually refers to the book as guide to how to care for a cat. The melancholy in the book lies not in the prostitutes the writer had hired, but within himself.
This is a good book, but grading on the curve, this is definitely lesser Garcia Marquez. He is capable of astonishing and stunning a reader, and here he really does neither. If you are a lover of Garcia Marquez and have read most of his major works, you should definitely give this a read. If you are not familiar with his work, this is not a good place to start. Among his short works, read CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD or OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS instead. Both of those show him at his greatest, two amazing masterpieces that are only very slightly longer than MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES.
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Really 2.5 stars . . . ., 2009-11-29
Por Maurice Williams(mauricewms)
Of course I'm familiar with the work of the esteemed writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My lack of interest in the stories conveyed by his two most acclaimed works, Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude, as well as the languid pace at which they were told rendered both novels inaccessible to me on the first attempt at reading them. Subsequent attempts at the novels did not yield better results; to date, I have yet to finish either. About three years ago I hit pay dirt with Marquez; "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" was an incredible read. I was quite proud to have finished the novella and to have connected with it on many levels.
My most recent encounter with Marquez, "Memories of My Melancholy Whores", left neither favorable nor unfavorable impressions. I did finish it, but I didn't feel particularly connected to it or changed by it; although I've reached the conclusion that the shorter the Marquez novel the better for me. The story is set somewhere in Columbia during an unspecified period that captures the main character during his ninetieth year. To celebrate this accomplishment, he decides to secure the services of a young virgin but finds that his sexual appetite has changed. After years of prostitutes and unrestricted sex he falls in love, her innocence perhaps, with the adolescent virgin. As the main character (I don't even recall if he's named) grapples with his first encounter with love he also struggles with the realities of aging.
I'm sure that I'll read this novel again; some thirty years from now perhaps as I'm certain there are aspects of the novel that I'll connect with more intensely at that time. For now, I wasn't moved. Not a bad read, but nothing particularly poignant for me in it either. Good luck!
1 de 3 votos han sido útiles para otras personas:
i love GABO, 2009-09-13
Por H. SHEHAB(SeductresS)
i love it ... i love GABO ... & i think i should read it again
