It’s been ten years since this Nobel laureate last published a work of fiction, so the arrival of the English translation of Memories of My Melancholy Whores qualifies as a major event—even though, at just more than one hundred pages, it’s more novella than novel. Still, after a bit of journalism and the obligatory stab at a memoir, it’s nice to see the Colombian master of magical realism returning to his bread and butter. Memories is unquestionably the work of a man with mortality on his mind, but it should come as no surprise that Garcia Marquez’s elderly protagonist (he is approaching his ninetieth birthday) retains a lust for life. Lust, period, in fact. The lifelong bachelor, a bit incredibly, decides to observe this milestone in his senescence by procuring the services of a young virgin. That’s something of an unseemly proposition, but yet there’s something oddly moving about this story of a randy and philosophical codger determined to be done in not by old age, but by love.
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