Memories of My Melancholy Whores: A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a review from TLS by Michael Kerrigan.
"The narrator of Garcia Marquez's new novel is supposed to be writing his own memoirs, provisionally entitled Memories of My Melancholy Whores. An elderly journalist, he arranges with the local madame, Rosa Cabarcas, to celebrate his ninetieth birthday with a night of love with a teenage virgin. She offers him a seamstress of fourteen. Such a conjunction of January and May, many will feel, belongs either in the medieval fabliau or the magistrate's court, but Garcia Marquez is disposed neither to ridicule nor to judge. Which is not to say that this is a work of unreflecting romance or ? still less ? erotica: the dirty-old-man-of-letters label will not stick. Not for Garcia Marquez, nor for his narrator, although sexual exploitation ? like other sorts ? is taken for granted in his world.... He certainly tells a beguiling story." Read the entire TLS review.