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Memories Of My Melancholy Whores Hardcover – 27 Oct 2005

4 out of 5 stars 32 customer reviews

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 128 pages
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape; First Edition edition (27 Oct. 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0224077643
  • ISBN-13: 978-0224077644
  • Product Dimensions: 14.5 x 1.4 x 22.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 407,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Product Description

Review

"Magic and cynicism, love and power, corruption and redemption: these abrasive pairings are hallmarks of the magic realism that Garcia Marquez is famous for pioneering. Yet his voice is never genre-bound or predictable. There is not in this slender book one stale sentence, redundant word or unfinished thought" (Ruth Scurr The Times)

"Marquez describes this amorous, sometimes disturbing journey with the grace and vigour of a master storyteller" (Eithne Farry Daily Mail)

"[A] tender fantasy of loneliness, hope and redemption...this enchanting little book adds another layer to his unhurried fictional world" (Angel Gurria-Quintana Financial Times)

Book Description

A major literary event: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's first work of fiction for ten years

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

Format: Paperback
I liked the title - provocative and edgy. I read the teaser and was intrigued. A 90 year old man who wants a young virgin for his birthday. I had mixed thoughts when I read she was only 14 and underage even in Columbia, but this is a story of fiction. It's a sad tale of a man who never gave himself the opportunity to love, only to indulge himself in brief sexual gratification found in brothels.
When he wanted sex, he paid for it. He spent his days writing a newspaper column and paid for sex when he wanted it. Love fluttered into his life when he was younger, but he swatted it away like an annoying mosquito. As his 90th birthday approaches, he realises he has missed out on emotional love and in a desperate last bid, sets out to find it in the only place he knows - the bordello. I felt sorry for him and wanted him to find love.
Beautifully written discovery of love in the latter years.
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Format: Kindle Edition
I came across Memories Of My Melancholy Whores in the library and given that it is relatively slight, just over 100 pages thought I'd give this a crack at finally losing my Marquez virginity.

The novel concerns an elderly journalist, unnamed throughout the novel who has only ever had sex with whores. On his 90th birthday he decides that what he most wants, as a gift to himself, is to deflower an adolescent virgin.

At the beginning of this novel, I thought I was about to read an extremely distasteful tale of a dirty old man, engaging in a vile abuse that was tantamount to rape. I was fully prepared to throw the book aside in disgust.

But then, when he meets his again unnamed whore, whom he christens Delgadina, she has taken valerian out of fear, and has fallen into a deep sleep, and the two do not have intercourse.

What follows as a result of this failure to fulfill his plans turns into a love story of incredibly unusual parameters and is on occasion very touching and fable-like.

I don't think I've read a story like this before, and I really admired and enjoyed it.

Odd and unique, I think I would recommend this to people who enjoy reading stories that are a bit different from the norm and the mainstream.

I hope that in the rest of this year, I can finally read one of his larger novels
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Format: Paperback
Memories of my Melancholy Whores is the tenth novel by Colombian author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The narrator is a second-rate journalist who decides to treat himself to a virgin on the eve of his ninetieth birthday. As he is a very frequent customer of his local brothels, the madam duly arranges a fourteen-year-old virgin for him. But he finds himself and, in fact, his whole attitude to life changed by the sight of the young, naked, sleeping girl. He is apparently in love for the first time in his life, but whilst he leaves her virginity intact, his descriptions of her do bring to mind the word paedophile. And the discussion he has with one of his previous whores about the relationship with the young virgin is no less disturbing. Into the story at various times come art and music, a bicycle, an angora cat, a housekeeper and a birthday party. Marquez’s lack of punctuation for dialogue requires careful reading to ascertain just who is speaking. While fans of this lauded author may enjoy this compact offering, many other readers may well wonder what the fuss is about.
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Format: Paperback
I couldn't initially decide if I was going to find `Memories of My Melancholy Whores' a mildly titillating read from its title (if I am being totally honest, especially after my failed attempts at Garcia Marquez before, I will admit that I thought that if it was it might help) and whilst there is some innuendo, bragging of the 514 women that he has slept with, a few very funny scenes of failed seduction and indeed of utter advantage taking, there is so much more going on in this novella.

As the novel opens we are introduced to our narrator on his ninetieth birthday where he has decided that he will give himself `the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin'. In fact no sooner have we met him than he is in contact with Rosa Cabarcas, the town's most infamous madam, who after a struggle finds him Delgadina a young girl of about fourteen. I will admit that when I read the `fourteen' I wasn't sure if I should read on, I was enthralled by the prose thus far but did I really want to read about a ninety year old man and a girl so young? Well, in the end I decided I should and thank goodness I did because what develops as the tale goes on is a touching story not only about love but also about age and a man who has never really had love in his life.

It was really this nameless man who makes this book a really special read. Not only as he goes from being this quite cold man who is very aware that he is difficult, `I pass myself off as prudent because I am so evil minded', to a man in the rather belated first flushes of youth. I also really liked him because of his humour, from tales of taking his maid Damiana by surprise (quite literally), which made me laugh out loud, to his sardonic wit in statements like `Movies are not my genre.
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