Memories of My Melancholy Whores ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Memories of My Melancholy Whores
~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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"Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s first work of fiction in ten years and it fully lives up to the expectations of his critics, readers, and fans of all ages and nationalities. "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" introduces us to a totally new genre of Garcia Marquez’s writing. It is a fairy tale for the aged – a story that celebrates the belated discovery of amorous passion in old age. This enticingly sensual yet at the same time innocent adventure tells of an unnamed second-rate reporter who on the eve of his 90th birthday decides to give himself ‘a night of mad love with a virgin adolescent’. In a little more than 100 pages, Garcia Marquez proceeds to describe a series of encounters that is hypnotizing and disturbing. When he first sees the chosen girl – a shy 14-year-old, whom he calls Delgadina – asleep, entirely naked, in the brothel room, his life begins to change completely. He never speaks to her nor does he learn anything about her, nor she of him. But her presence spurs the aged pensioner to recall his experiences with the other women in his life, all whores by profession, all paid to perform for him the acts of love. But now he realizes that ’sex is the consolation one has for not finding enough love’. Smitten, he screams of his love from the rooftops, which for him means writing about it in his weekly newspaper columns, and in return, he becomes the most famous man in his town. Love has always been a major theme in Garcia Marquez’s writing. It is often visualized in his fiction as a source of endurance, a bulwark against the rush of time’s passage. "In Love in the Time of Cholera", he celebrated a love that was almost fifty years in forming, modeling it on the courtship of his own grandparents. This last novel, written at the peak of the author’s fame, is another illustration of its transformative power. "Memories of My Melancholy Whores", written in Marquez’s incomparable style, movingly contemplates the misfortunes of old age and celebrates the joys of being in love.

Love in the Time of Cholera ~ Marquez

Love in the Time of Cholera ~ Marquez

(Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) ~ Translated by: Edith Grossman

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In this chronicle of a unique love triangle, the Nobel laureate's trademark "ironic vision and luminous evocation of South America" persist. "It is a fully mature novel in scope and perspective, flawlessly translated, as rich in ideas as in humanity". While delivering a message to her father, Florentino Ariza spots the barely pubescent Fermina Daza and immediately falls in love. What follows is the story of a passion that extends over 50 years, as Fermina is courted solely by letter, decisively rejects her suitor when he first speaks, and then joins the urbane Dr. Juvenal Urbino, much above her station, in a marriage initially loveless but ultimately remarkable in its strength. Florentino remains faithful in his fashion; paralleling the tale of the marriage is that of his numerous liaisons, all ultimately without the depth of love he again declares at Urbino's death. In substance and style not as fantastical, as mythologizing, as the previous works, this is a compelling exploration of the myths we make of love.

Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera) (1985) is set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it tells the poignant story of the power of unrequited love, and how lovesickness (much like cholera) can plague human existence. The novel involves a love triangle between Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza and Juvenal Urbino which endures for fifty years, revealed through a flashback from childhood to old age. As children, Fermina and Florentino experienced a brief romance leaving Florentino obsessed with Fermina and lovesick. In his unsuccessful attempts to alleviate his all-consuming longing for Fermina, Florentino not only engages in 622 affairs, but immerses himself in a life of poetry and literature. He identifies with romantic poets. Meanwhile, at the age of twenty-one, Fermina is forced by her father Lorenzo, a mule driver, to marry Juvenal Urbino, a doctor. Their arranged marriage endures. Fermina becomes a devoted wife, and critics have described her as a "freethinker." "She is the strong one," Márquez has said about Fermina Daza; "She is the novel." In contrast to Florentino, a romantic, Juvenal Urbino is a man of science, a doctor with a rational mind, committed to the eradication of cholera, and capable of providing Fermina with a sense of security. The novel opens with Juvenal's funeral, after which Florentino again declares his undying love for Fermina, which makes her furious. Until the novel returns to this scene and Florentino's renewed declaration of love for Fermina, one is left contemplating whether his love is a kind of nobility or a pathetic, Don Quixote-like foolishness. In the final pages of his novel, Márquez answers that question. As with One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera reveals the extraordinary genius of Márquez.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE ~ GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

~ GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

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"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of "One Hundred Years of Solitude", Buendía, stands before the firing squad. In between, he recounts such wonders as an entire town struck with insomnia, a woman who ascends to heaven while hanging laundry, and a suicide that defies the laws of physics: A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlour, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread. "Holy Mother of God!", Úrsula shouted. The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women - the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar - who struggle to remain grounded even as their men-folk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove, she understood what he was looking for, and from then on, she placed water jugs all about the house." With "One Hundred Years of Solitude", Gabriel García Márquez introduced Latin American Literature to a world-wide readership. Translated into more than two dozen languages, his brilliant novel of love and loss in Macondo stands at the apex of 20th-Century Literature.

Chronicle Of A Death Foretold ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Chronicle Of A Death Foretold ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Gabriel García Márquez's novel "Chronicle of a Death Foretold", first published in English in 1982, is one of the Nobel Prize-winning author's shorter novels, but past and current critics agree that the book's small size hides a huge work of art. According to Jonathan Yardley in 'Washington Post Book World', Chronicle of a Death Foretold "is, in miniature, a virtuoso performance." The book's power lies in the unique way in which García Márquez relates the plot of a murder about which everyone knows before it happens. A narrator tells the story in the first person, as a witness to the events that occurred. Yet the narrator is recounting the tale years later from an omniscient point of view, sharing all of the characters' thoughts. García Márquez's use of this creative technique adds to the mystery of the murder. In addition, the repeated foretelling of the crime helps build the suspense. Even though the murderers' identities are known, the specific details of the killing are not. Besides its unusual point of view, the book's themes also contribute to its success. The question of male honour in Latin American culture underlies this story of passion and crime. As in other Garcia Marquez works, there is also an element of the supernatural: dreams and other mystical signs ominously portend the murder. Garcia Marquez's artistry in combining these elements led critic Edith Grossman to say in ‘Review’, "Once again Garcia Marquez is an ironic chronicler who dazzles the reader with uncommon blendings of fantasy, fable, and fact."

In Evil Hour ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In Evil Hour ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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"In Evil Hour" is one of the early novels written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Published in 1962, it was previous to his "A Hundred Years of Solitude" and "The Autumn of the Patriarch", some of his most famous novels and that consolidated his style. Considering that, one can say that this novel is really good. It is not as fine tuned as his best works, there is no 'Magical Realism' in here - actually, the book is quite realist - but it is such an engaging and well conceived story that it is impossible to stop reading / "In Evil Hour" deals with politics, but in a very subtle way. Hints are given here and there about the recent changes the town has faced. The past seems to have been obscure, but we are never certain of that. Marques exploit heavy subjects that darken Latin American History with grace and seriousness and his peculiar sense of humour. And in the end we seem to have spent some time in that village, and however much we may have enjoyed it, we may not be willing to come back to that place - although one may want to re-read this book one of these days...

Of Love and Other Demons ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Of Love and Other Demons ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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In a Latin American port city during colonial times, a young girl named Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles - the only child of the ineffectual Marquis de Casalduero - is bitten by a rabid dog. Her father, who has shown no interest in the child, begins a crusade to save her life, eventually committing her to the Convent of Santa Clara, when the bishop persuades him that his daughter is possessed by demons. In fact, Sierva Maria has shown no signs of being infected by rabies or by demons; she is simply being punished for being different. Having been raised by the family's slaves, she knows their languages and wears their Santeria necklaces; she is perceived by the effete European Americans around her as "not of this world." Only the priest who has reluctantly accepted the job as her exorcist believes she is neither sick nor possessed, but terrified after being inexplicably "interred alive" among the superstitious nuns. Nobel Prize winner Garcia Marquez writes with his usual inventiveness, but over the years his prose style has crystallized and condensed. The result is a tale whose sharp social retort is made all the louder by the luminous, uncluttered telling / a tale of the love between a middle-aged priest and a young girl believed to be possessed by demons...

The Autumn Of The Patriarch ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Autumn Of The Patriarch

~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez, renowned as a master of 'magical realism', creates stories that grip the imagination. Set in exotic locals, peoples with unforgettable characters, and crafted with exquisite prose, his stories transport the reader to a world that is at once fanciful and real. One of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most intricate and ambitious works, "The Autumn of the Patriarch" is a brilliant tale of a Caribbean tyrant and the corruption of power. Employing an innovative, dreamlike style, the novel is overflowing with symbolic descriptions as it vividly portrays the dying tyrant caught in the prison of his own dictatorship. From charity to deceit, benevolence to violence, fear of God to extreme cruelty, the dictator embodies at once the best and the worst of human nature. "The Autumn of the Patriarch" mines one of the darkest veins in Latin American political history. The central character is a composite of Trujillos, Batistas and Somozas. His is a genius at the barren politics of survival, capable and guilty of the most savage brutality, a lonely monster who shuffles through his palace every night, checking the locks, looking for assassins, lighting a lantern for a quick exit.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Memories of My Melancholy Whores
~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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"Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s first work of fiction in ten years and it fully lives up to the expectations of his critics, readers, and fans of all ages and nationalities. "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" introduces us to a totally new genre of Garcia Marquez’s writing. It is a fairy tale for the aged – a story that celebrates the belated discovery of amorous passion in old age. This enticingly sensual yet at the same time innocent adventure tells of an unnamed second-rate reporter who on the eve of his 90th birthday decides to give himself ‘a night of mad love with a virgin adolescent’. In a little more than 100 pages, Garcia Marquez proceeds to describe a series of encounters that is hypnotizing and disturbing. When he first sees the chosen girl – a shy 14-year-old, whom he calls Delgadina – asleep, entirely naked, in the brothel room, his life begins to change completely. He never speaks to her nor does he learn anything about her, nor she of him. But her presence spurs the aged pensioner to recall his experiences with the other women in his life, all whores by profession, all paid to perform for him the acts of love. But now he realizes that ’sex is the consolation one has for not finding enough love’. Smitten, he screams of his love from the rooftops, which for him means writing about it in his weekly newspaper columns, and in return, he becomes the most famous man in his town. Love has always been a major theme in Garcia Marquez’s writing. It is often visualized in his fiction as a source of endurance, a bulwark against the rush of time’s passage. "In Love in the Time of Cholera", he celebrated a love that was almost fifty years in forming, modeling it on the courtship of his own grandparents. This last novel, written at the peak of the author’s fame, is another illustration of its transformative power. "Memories of My Melancholy Whores", written in Marquez’s incomparable style, movingly contemplates the misfortunes of old age and celebrates the joys of being in love.