Memories of My Melancholy Whores

No, this isn’t a journal post, but rather the title of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s most recent work of fiction, which I recently had the pleasure of reading. This book was Marquez’s first work of fiction in ten years. The novel (or novella, given its length), is divided into five sections. I found the first of these the most moving, and could see it working as a short story. The novel concerns a man who, on his ninetieth birthday, falls in love with a fourteen year old virgin. While the novel could easily read as a bizarre defense of pedophilia, I certainly did not conclude this. The lead character’s love of such a young girl is more a symbolic act of falling in love with the notion of love itself. His infatuation with a child reflects the youth of his spirit, and also his lack of maturity in his relationships with women. The old adage goes that you are only as old as you feel, and this character behaves much in the manner of a befuddled sixteen year old. A novel in the same vein as this would be Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, surely the superior work. Nevertheless, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is a bittersweet book capable of being read in one sitting, and the narrator is a character of no small intrigue in his own right. Also, I’ve heard the novel reads better in Spanish, so if you’re competent in it, then read it as it was originally written.