Gabriel García Márquez is indisputably one of the significant writers of the present day. This novella Memoirs of my Melancholy Whores, originally written in Spanish, has a very realistic story, some even say its inspired from his own life.
The story in nutshell is.. An old man celebrates his 90th birthday by seeking sex with an 14 year old virgin to-be prostitute. While he meets the girl, finds her deep asleep tired from the day’s work. Unwilling to wake her up, he sits beside and starts admiring her. Night after night he comes to see the sleeping beauty, falls in love with her. The story goes forward as feels for his little ‘Delgadina’.
Falling into Gabo’s captivating words, we (the reader) become the 90 year old man. The story has very limited characters, most of the names not at all mentioned. I think there is very little description about this journalist, whose name is also not mentioned, because he wants us to be that guy. There is a lot of space for our imagination to be filled in by the reader.
There is also a beautiful passage about life.
“I began to measure my life not by years but by decades. The decade of my fifties had been decisive because I became aware that almost everybody was younger than I. The decade of my sixties was the most intensive because of the suspicion that I no longer had the time to make mistakes. My seventies were frightening because of a certain possibility that the decade might be the last. Still, when I woke alive on the first morning of my nineties in the happy bed of Delgadina, I was transfixed by the agreeable idea that life was not something that passes by like Heraclitus’ ever changing river but a unique opportunity to turn over on the grill and keep broiling on the other side for another ninety years.”
Life doesn’t cease at old age, we continue to breathe on.. whether to live every moment or just to wait until death is in our hands.
There are many references to Delgadina, a Mexican folk song. The journalist even signs it to her. Delgadina is the daughter of a king, who disobeys her father’s wish to marry him. Her father locks her up in a tower where she dies of thirst. Like the king, the old guy also bears the unrequited love for a young girl.
He lived an empty life with no one to love, the thought dying of love was a mere poetic license. As the story turns out, after meeting Delgadina, he proved himself wrong.. he starts living a real life, with heart safe and condemned to die of happy love in the joyful agony.
A very beautifully written book, its so lyrical and pleasure to read.
Ethnic Mutt 