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Memories of My Melancholy Whores | 
 enlarge | Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Creator: Edith Grossman
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $11.95
Buy Used: $3.91
You Save: $8.04 (67%)
Rating:  107 reviews
Sales Rank: 10078
Media: Paperback
Pages: 128
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.4
ISBN: 1400095948
Dewey Decimal Number: 863.64
EAN: 9781400095940
ASIN: 1400095948
Publication Date: November 14, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
"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." Marquez'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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 102 more reviews...
 Recycled and shallow... is this really Marquez ? July 12, 2008
A. Scarlat
The protagonist of this book mentions a Latin quote: "No old man forgets where he has hidden his treasure" Well....in this case it seems that Marquez has forgotten exactly that: the place where he has hidden his superb skills as a narrator of fascinating, magic realistic stories.
The novel is a shallow, disappointing story about a 90 years old bachelor and his love for a teenage virgin he likes to watch while she sleeps. The magic atmosphere of the small South American city which is Marquez forte in other novels feels like a strained recycled background to an unsatisfying story.
Is it possible that like Salvador Dali at old age allowing young painters to imitate his style, this book was written by a ghost writer while the old master nods his head slowly in the heat of an afternoon siesta in Macombo ?
That obscure object of imaginary desire... July 4, 2008
ewomack (MN USA)
Many men create fantasmical ideas of malleable women to either charge their fantasy lives or as a diversion from harsh realities. This myth of the woman perpetually "ready and willing to do anything for love" lives on in pornography, the beauty industry, and mainstream culture - not to mention in the minds of men. Alfred Hitchcock explored it in "Vertigo" as did Nabokov in "Lolita." Some years later, Gabriel Garcia Marquez explored this same theme, with possible Hitchcockian inspiration, in "Memories of My Melancholy whores." The first person narrative, similar to some of Marquez's earlier stories as well as "Vertigo," features an old man "falling in love" with a much younger woman. But, in all cases, what the man exactly "falls" for remains somewhat ineffable. In "Melancholy Whores" an unnamed, self-deprecating, but not very self-aware ninety year old journalist, via his own obscure desires, pays the local brothel queen, Rosa Cabarcas, for "a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin." The novel (or maybe more appropriate, novella) opens with a sentence seductive as young love. Rosa procures a delectable 14 year old for a price beyond the narrator's means. Nonetheless, he goes to meet the girl, who slumbers from a relaxing elixir and the abject stress of factory work. Nothing happens. Rosa persuades him back. Still nothing happens. In time, the man develops a bizarre love for the girl who never speaks nor stirs from "sleep." He doesn't even want to know her name. Instead, he calls her "Delgadina" ("Thin Maiden") after a song he remembers about an old king seducing his daughter. He buys her things but never speaks to her. Soon he's hopelessly "in love," but it remains clear that this "love" originates and is nurtured solely by his imagination. Within his narrative, the girl doesn't even seem to exist. He never suspects that the entire sequence of events may have been contrived by Rosa. Nor does he feel any pangs over exploiting an impoverished girl, whose mother remains crippled, merely to fill his life's gaps. By the middle of the book he has revealed his legacy of sexual conquests, despite the fact that he describes himself as "ugly." Not only that, he basically rapes his housemaid, Damiana, with impunity, but flees from the seductive Ximena Oritz, who presents her sumptuous body to him in the manner of a classic odalisque. He runs very far, from the altar, at least. Obscure object of desire, indeed. But as his love for his imaginary adolescent grows, his writing skills flower. He has written a newspaper column for years. Suddenly the subject turns to love. The public eats it up and fame enters the old man's life. Still, he addictively returns to the brothel to see the girl, his love, "sleeping." Though he has never held a conversation with this anonymous "Delgadina" (does he even know that's the same girl visit to visit? She flowers unexpectantly towards the book's end), by story's end he bets everything on her. Literally everything. She remains an abstract shadow even after Rosa tells him "that poor creature's head over heels in love with you." This appears very disingenuous, particularly given the wager the two just made. The old cliche "a fool and his money are soon parted" bubbles up in the subconscious. Nonetheless, the narrator does grow in the process. But at what, or at whose, cost? "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" ultimately paints a brutal picture of age, loneliness, illusion, exploitation, and self-denial - or at least lack of self-reflection. Though, on the surface, it presents itself as a blithe comedic tale of rediscovery in old age. The translation reads fluidly and quickly. Nonetheless, the multifarious questions this tiny book raises will take much more time to absorb.
 short but highly rewarding novella July 2, 2008
C. B Collins Jr. (Atlanta, GA United States)
This is a very fine novella. It is spiced with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's sly humor and timeless and yet uniquely expressed wisdom. It is so well written that I found myself speeding through it, finishing it in less than 3 hours. Because of the seamless narrative flow and compelling voice of the 90 year old narrator it is easy to read this book a bit too fast. Marquez is an incredible master of the written word as this parable illustrates. Edith Grossman, the translator, is a talented woman.
I think the book had two major themes that were carefully and skillfully interwoven. The first theme is about the state of old age, the reflections one has of the past and the observations one has of the present. I was reminded of a statement my 86 year old father said recently that he 'still felt the same on the inside as he has always felt, it is just that the outside has grown old.' This is one of the themes Marquez explores. Marquez explores the nature of old age in that even though consciousness gives us the impression that we are the same as always, in fact we are burdened with memories and past relationships, many of them haunting and sad. Yet Marquez then tells us that loss of memory is in fact a gift under these circumstances. He says of memory 'it is a triumph of life that old people lose their memories of inessential things, though memory does not often fail with regard to things that are of interest to us. Cicero illustrated this with the stroke of a pen: no old man forgets where he has hidden his treasure.'
Our narrator is allowed to reflect upon this aspect of himself as he watches a nude 14 year old virgin sleep in a brothel. The 90 year old narrator, an ugly journalist of little talent, is moved to have sex with a virgin on his 90 birthday. However the young girl selected by the aged Madame at the brothel sleeps soundly with his every visit, allowing him to both project upon her his fantasy and also to reflect on his life. This is where the second theme is so skillfully developed. The second theme is that there is a type of romantic love that is fully based on projection and is more about the self than the love object. It is with the self that the person loves. The 90 year old narrator has never really loved and never really had a close friend, yet at age 90 as he watches the nude 14 year old sleeping, he projects love upon her and thus experiences a level of self love he has not experienced fully before. Marquez in his wisdom lets us know that the projected romantic love that in some folks becomes obsessive love, is really much more about the self than about the other. However age and maturity are often needed to recognize this. There is uncanny energy in projected love as he states; 'the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love.' Our 90 year old narrator has had many sexual encounters but never love and he states; ' sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love.'
Thus the encounters open up the aged narrator to such insights as; 'I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite; a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people's time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.'
The novella does not shy away from some of the moral aspects of the story for a 90 year old man falling in love with a sleeping 14 year old virgin is ripe for moral discussion. The book was banned in Iran for this very reason. The exploration is very different from Nabokov's Lolita, where the narrator is a much younger foolish man and the girl was alert and active. Marquez has one character say 'morality is a question of time' meaning that morality is as strongly influenced by experience as it is by circumstance. In fact, Marquez's statement would imply that experience is the determination of our moral sense more so that the conditions of the situation in question.
Marquez's wit is evident throughout the book with such quotes as 'scholars may know it all but they don't know everything'. I also liked 'Movies are not my genre. The obscene cult of Shirley Temple was the final straw.'
His humane wisdom also shines forth with 'jealousy knows more than truth does' and his quote from Julius Caesar that 'in the end, it is impossible not to become what others believe you are.'
Overall this is a short but highly rewarding reading experience.
A parable on sex, and love, and the bed they make to lie in. June 7, 2008
Sophia Bezirganian (NY United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book's genius is its masterful infusion with the element of surprise. The story's title suggests that we will perhaps be subjected to a nostalgic self-indulgent account of the sexual adventures of some callous testosterone-bloated man. Instead, we find a hero who is thoughtful, generous, and exquisitely sensitive and attuned to his lovers' slightest moves. Our stud-hero is cast as a journalist who finds himself a very old man. This leads us (or at least me) to expect him to present as a pedantic pseudo-intellectual scribe, who will wax philosophical about his lechery, so as to create the illusion that he remains a force to be reckoned with. Instead, the hero is revealed as a model of self-effacement, and one who is often remorseful at past behaviors toward his paid lovers, agonizing over several of these for half a century. And his philosophical insights flow in a lyrical style devoid of any pedantry.
Surprise is also delivered through Garcia-Marquez's signature blanketing of his story with symbolism, unexpected metaphors, contrasting images, and juxtaposed `opposites': In one scene we see the hero as the impulsive and brutish (then penitent, then recidivist) rapist of his housekeeper. Then, on the heels of this vignette we see our "conqueror" as timid, almost trembling, as he eyes his served-up sleeping virgin. We see prostitutes wearing garish make-up, but also pendants of the Virgin.
The key `'surprise' for me however, was in the balance of power between the sexes. The hero is painted--often with theatrical excess-- as a dominant prowling male. Yet in the majority (if not all) of his liaisons he lives in fear that at any moment he will be (or has been) snubbed or discarded by his quarry, and thus repeatedly finds himself completely at her mercy. I see this paradox (of the hunter as beholden to his prey) as a key to what was for me the book's main message: that (for men at least), success in 'passion' (defined in book as conquest and possession of prized love target(s)--regardless of the lofty vs. banal nature of attributes each considers requisite in a`prized' lover--is a powerful vehicle that can be transforming and life-altering in its potency to generate success across the broad spectrum of his life ambitions.
I'll close by adding my spin to the musing among reaviwers as to whether this is primarily a book of love, sex, or old age: it's a book about how they all interact! Of how the power of requited passion can transform a man at any age, into one who becomes as creative, inspired, and alive as man can be.
 I wanted to like it more May 9, 2008
Ratmammy (Ratmammy's Town, CA USA)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
May 8, 2008
Rating *** 1/2 (3.5/5 Stars)
I really wanted to LOVE this book, but I think again my problem with Gabriel Garcia Marquez (this being the 3rd piece of fiction that I've read by him) is that I am either not focused on the writing, or I'm simply not getting it. When I enjoy a book, I turn the last page with a WOW feeling, or I'm crying, or I wish the book hadn't ended. With MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES, I didn't have any of these reactions. Yes, I loved the writing - he has a gift for details, and he doesn't hold back. I love that he enjoys writing about illness and bodily fluids, and I'm always laughing out loud during these passages. But when I finished the book, I didn't have the "wow" sensation I expected to have.
The main character, who remains nameless throughout the book, is about to celebrate his 90th birthday, and wants to give himself a present in the form of a virginal prostitute. He has had prostitutes, hundreds of them, but this time he wants something special. She needs to be untouched and young. His old friend, a madam he has gone to for years, promises to obtain what he wants, and she brings him a young girl, virginal, for his birthday. However, for some reason, he never deflowers her. He instead leaves her untouched (as she gives him the sign that she is frightened) and marvels at her body and her beauty.
At the same time, he turns to his memories and his long life, his career as a journalist, and the fact that he never married. And night after night, he does not touch this virginal girl, and the one thing that has never happened to him happens - he falls in love.
I love reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez because his words are so beautiful. But again, I felt that I couldn't grasp what he really wanted to say in this book. I am disappointed that I don't have the capacity to really appreciate his works, and this will be the last time I will attempt to read a fiction book of his. However, I will read his autobiography, which I hope will be a fascinating read.
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