After a ten-year break from novel-writing, Gabriel Garc'a Me0rquez returns with Memories of My Melancholy Whores, a scant tale of love overcoming habit and old age. Though it sounds like an echo of Love in the Time of Cholera, it's not -- though it might be better if it had been.
Our protagonist and narrator, a crotchety, self-obsessed newspaperman and professor we know only by the nickname Professor Gloomy Hills, decides to celebrate his 90th birthday with "the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin." But when he meets his 14-year-old present she remains asleep for the duration of the novel -- this self-avowed man of leisure falls in love for the first time.
Early on, we learn that Professor Gloomy Hills has paid for every sexual encounter in his life, even if the woman wasn't a prostitute and had to be forced to accept the money. He also keeps a list of every woman he has ever slept with (between ages 20 and 50, there were 514). Certainly, this man has had his share of opportunities for love -- and it's this sleeping lump of flesh that finally does him in?
Readers of Garc'a Me0rquez should be used to accepting the impossible without batting an eye, but here the narrator is earnest rather than fantastical; he strives for realism without a trace of the magic of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Instead, ordinariness is thrust upon us on every page -- Gloomy Hills recites in detail what books are most important to him (five dictionaries); recounts the programs of past concerts precisely, including his opinions on the interpretations of various works; and relates entire conversations, taking care to describe specific awkwardnesses.
Having spent his entire life preoccupied with nobody but himself, the Professor is reluctant to start acknowledging other people this late in the game. The object of his affections, whom he calls Delgadina, is practically a figment of his imagination. When, after a brief period apart, he notices that her appearance has changed slightly; this interference of the outside world makes him jealous and suspicious.
Although there are some parallels with Lolita, Gloomy Hills is not nearly as interesting a narrator. His neuroses aren't meant to make us question him, but rather to reinforce his truthfulness. The result, rather than a strange, compelling persona like a Humbert or an Underground Man, is a banal, obsessive and ultimately very boring old man.
In contrast to his other great works, Garc'a Me0rquez gives us a straightforward, banal account and a single, one-dimensional character. In trying to distance himself from his earlier styles, his latest work comes off as an exercise in writing as mundanely as possible. He succeeds, but it's hardly an accomplishment.
