Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
April 8, 2005
Published:
London, UK : Express Newspapers
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Features; 53
Notes:
Ben Fogle lists Gabriel García Márquez's book One Hundred Years of Solitude as one of his six best books. Fogle states that the book is "a complicated tale, like a patchwork, with a zillion characters. It's set in a Colombian town, and the focal point is a Latin American family."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
May 15, 2005
Published:
Tampa, FL : The Tribune Co.
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Baylife; 8
Notes:
Walker reviews Chronicle of a Death Foretold, stating that "this slim volume might be the best entry into Márquez's work. It contains many of the elements that mark so much of his fiction - love, fate, familial ties, dreams, desperation, magic - as well as some of his tightest writing."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
May 21, 2005
Published:
London, UK : Associated Newspapers Ltd.
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Weekend; 22
Notes:
"Sue Macgregor, presenter of the Radio 4 series, A Good Read, tells York Membery about her favourite novels..." Love in The Time Of Cholera is one of them. She states that "the warm slow prose and the magic realism Márquez has made famous, matches the dreamy heat of the South American setting."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
July 24, 2005
Published:
Tampa, FL : The Tribune Co.
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Baylife; 6
Notes:
Walker lists One Hundred Years of Solitude as a book everyone should read. He states that "reading Gabriel García Márquez is akin to sitting around a campfire, listening to a master storyteller, and his prose retains its magic even in translation from the Spanish."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
August 25, 2005
Published:
Australia : West Australian Newspapers Limited
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Features; 16
Notes:
Review of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. The review states that the book "transformed world literature when it was published in 1967.
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
August 28, 2005
Published:
Houston, TX : The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Zest; 15
Notes:
Fritz reviews García Márquez's book Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Fritz states that the book "triggers recollections of a lifetime of paid-for sex and ultimately a vision of uncorrupted love."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
September 4, 2005
Published:
Lancaster, PA : Lancaster Newspapers, Inc
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
5
Notes:
In this Review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores it is stated that the book is about "a 90-year-old man who decides to give himself a night of love."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
September 8, 2005
Published:
McLean, VA : Gannett Company, Inc
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Life; 6D
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Deirdre Donahue explains that "the narrator is expert in the world of love for money but finds that transformation is possible even at the end of life."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
July 15, 2005
Published:
New York, NY : VNU Business Media, Inc
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
73(14) : Fiction: 754
Notes:
This review of Memories of My Melancholy Whores states that "There is no indication--unless it is the word "melancholy" in the title--that García Márquez means his tale to be the parody of macho idiocy it appears to be. His hero ends revitalized and radiantly optimistic, while readers are left wondering, "Can he be serious?" What can't be dismissed, however, is García Márquez's gift for the casually adept insight."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 15, 2005
Published:
London, UK : Guardian Newspapers Limited
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Guardian Review Pages; 15
Notes:
Ian Watson compares García Márquez's novel Memoria de mis putas tristes with Yasunari Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties, stating that it has "Exactly the same theme of old man and comatose drugged girl(s)."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 2, 2005
Published:
Boston, MA : Globe Newspaper Company
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; D7
Notes:
Pearlman quotes a review by Stephen McCauley on One Hundred Years of Solitude which states that "after reading this novel there was no forgetting that modern literature is bigger than the English language. Marquez took the top of my head off with the incantational beauty of his imagination, the mythic explication of South American history, the living ghosts and the dead ghosts, the dizzying repetition of names from one generation to the next."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 17, 2005
Published:
Las Vegas, NV : DR Partners d/b Las Vegas Review
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
E; 1E
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores White states that the book is about "a 90-year-old man [who] buys sex with a young virgin, triggering memories of past prostitutes he's enjoyed."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 24, 2005
Published:
Boston, MA : Boston Herald
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
The Edge; O40
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores Mejer states that "to Call Gabriel García Márquez's latest effort disturbing is an understatement. In Memories of My Melancholy Whores, the Nobel Prize-winner's first work of fiction in a decade, it's not the subject matter that's disturbing, it's the love story."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 21, 2005
Published:
London, UK : Associated Newspapers
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
64
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores Eithne Farry states that the novel is "an elegiac fairytale that celebrates old age and the possibilities of rejuvenation."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 22, 2005
Published:
London, UK : Times Newspapers Limited
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; 16
Notes:
In reviewing Gabriel García Máquez's novel Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Ruth Scurr states that the book "depicts a respected journalist, breaking the rules of a lifetime to fall madly, anarchically, transgressively in love with a 14-year-old girl on the eve of his 90th birthday."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 23, 2005
Published:
London, UK : Times Newspapers Limited
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Culture; 53
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márquez's novel Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Andrew Holgate states that "those anxious about the 78-year-old Colombian Nobel Laureate's continued vigour as a fiction writer will not have their anxieties allayed by this new novel. In size, style and subject matter, this is a work suffused with a sense of exhaustion."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 23, 2005
Published:
New York, NY : Daily News
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Sunday Now; 21
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Howard Kissle states that "the prose, translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman, has its own magic. The time setting is vague, which heightens the sense of a lush and timeless world in which the narrator is an eccentric and beguiling if emotionally uninvolving figure."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 24, 2005
Published:
Columbus, OH : The Columbus Dispatch
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Features - Life; 03B
Notes:
In reviewing Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores, The Columbus Dispatch quotes Publishers Weekly, which described the novel as a "slim, reflective contribution to the romance of the brothel" with "striking insights into the euphoria that is the flip side of the fear of death."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 14, 2005
Published:
London, UK : Guardian Newspapers
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
36
Notes:
John Crace's review of Memories of My Melancholy Whores simply recounts the novel by presenting the most important quotes. It offers no critique or description.
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 19, 2005
Published:
New York, NY : The New York Sun
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Front Page; 1
Notes:
In his review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Adam Kirsch discusses the controversy around the novel's subject matter. In his article he states that "Mr. García Márquez manages to deflect moral or even psychological judgment on the acts of his characters because the "magic" of his fiction annuls the "realism" that is supposed to go along with it."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 30, 2005
Published:
Columbus, OH : The Columbus Dispatch
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
The Arts; Bookends; 07F
Notes:
In his review of Gabriel García Márquez's novel Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Bill Eichenberger discusses the narrator and states that "one needn't like a first-person narrator for a novel to be successful, but one must at least find that narrator interesting. The reclusive narrator of Gabriel García Márquez's first work of fiction in 10 years...is indeed interesting."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 29, 2005
Published:
Edinburgh, Scotland : The Scotsman Publications
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
9
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores Allan Massie states that "The novella is really a meditation on old age, that time of life when reality itself can appear, as the narrator remarks, "fantastic"...The old may feel as intensely as they ever did in their youth. But what they feel seems in them incredible, absurd, or disgusting to those who have not yet arrived at the summit from which the read leads precipitously downhill to the grave."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 31, 2005
Published:
New Delhi, India : Living Media India
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; 77
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márqez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores S. Parasannarajan states that "The lovers in "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" too are placed in the Marquezian enigma: she speaks only one sentence in the book; he had reinvented her in the delirium of desire...The novel itself is like a stray sentence of burning beauty from a master."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 30, 2005
Published:
Cleveland, OH : Plain Dealer Publishing
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; H5
Notes:
In this review of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Felipe Nieves discusses the novel and also critiques Edith Grossman's translation of the text from Spanish to English.
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 30, 2005
Published:
Toronto, Canada : Toronto Star Newspapers
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; D07
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Philip Marchand compares the novel to Philip Roth's The Dying Animal, but states that "Marquez's culture, by contrast, is wiser. It recognizes that desire leads to suffering, and that suffering can also be delightful, in a way, but suffering ends in defeat, and defeat is a melancholy thing, to be sure."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 29, 2005
Published:
Nationwide News
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
BooksReview; 16
Notes:
This review of Memories of My Melancholy Whores is set up as a series of e-mails from Helen Elliot about the novel. In one of the e-mails she states that "Memories of My Melancholy Whores is a brilliant meditation on this matter of love and puts paid to any ideas of tranquility and old age. It's also a great place to begin reading Marquez because the great early books are daunting for those with a timid digestion when it comes to gaudy."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 30, 2005
Published:
Hartford, CT : The Hartford Courant
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Arts; G3
Notes:
In discussing the unusual topic of the book Leblanc states that "some readers will be distressed by the sexual mores of this story, and they may not be able to see it primarily as a tale of love and aging. Worse, they may not see that García ultimately celebrates love, which can conquer solitude, instead of sex, which cannot."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 2, 2005
Published:
Philedelphia, PA : Knight Ridder/ Tribune News Service
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Notes:
In this review of Memories of My Melancholy Whores Carlin Romano notes many similarities between Gabriel García Márquez's life and the life of the narrator in his book. She also suggests that the reader "think of "Memories," then, as the lustrously written story of a shipwrecked sailer, as "magic prurience" protected from severe criticism by the astounding prior achievement of its sainted but unsaintly author."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 6, 2005
Published:
Washington, DC : The Washington Post
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Book World; T07
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores Marie Arana discusses the novel in detail and concludes that "this is a story of love. A man mustn't die without knowing the wonder."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 4, 2005
Published:
Seattle, WA : The Seattle Times Company
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; J10
Notes:
In this article Michael Upchurch reviews Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores and compares it to John Cheever's Oh What a Paradise it Seems, stating that Memories of My Melancholy Whores "too, is a lyrical-raunchy portrait of an old man taking what may be his last taste of the world."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 6, 2005
Published:
Pittsburgh, PA : P.G. Publishing
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Book Review; C-4
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores Bob Hoover states that "the author of the masterpiece "One Hundred Years of Solitude" isn't offering us anything as entertaining or challenging this time, only a bauble, a sliver of his genius."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 6, 2005
Published:
Los Angeles : Los Angeles Times
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Book Review;7
Notes:
Belle-Villada discusses the novel's content and concludes that it "is an exquisitely wrought tale, and Edith Grossman's translation ably captures its autumnal beauty."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 6, 2005
Published:
London, UK : Newspaper Publishing
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Features; 26
Notes:
Ian Thomas discuses the plot of Memories of My Melancholy Whores and states that the "novel is a tired, Lolita-like fable about an old man's lust for a teenage girl."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 6, 2005
Published:
Huston, TX : The Huston Chronicle Publishing Company
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Zest; 25
Notes:
In this review Freeman states that the novel "is not a story about a man who finds eros in the nick of time, but about how much sway the idea of it has over us, even at the end of our days."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 6, 2005
Published:
Baltimore, MD : The Baltimore Sun Company
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Ideas; 5F
Notes:
Redding states about the book that "Fans of García Márquez's previous works will find Memories unusually slim, but the brevity is deceptive - all of García Márquez's usual depth resonates here, as does his sense of storytelling. No magical realism occurs, as much as the narrator might like it to: His cat cannot guide him to the missing Delgadina, just as he cannot catch sight of her riding the bicycle he gave her to her factory job."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
2005
Published:
Lincoln, NE : University of Nebraska Press
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
(79.1) : 189-193
Notes:
In his review Townley states that, "His long awaited memoir, Living to Tell the Tale, the first in a planned autobiographical trilogy, is a richly imagined volume, brimming with lush description and historical immediacy. And if the author has, over the course of his seventy-five magical years, succumbed to those ineluctable lapses in memory, we're certainly none the wiser. And it wouldn't matter anyway: as García Márquez writes in the book's epigraph, "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it."" Townley also states that, "unlike many contemporary autobiographies, this one does not indulge in postmodern fripperies. Instead, García Márquez offers a "traditional" memoir: one recounted through the first person in the past tense, in a voice both warm and conversational."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 9, 2005
Published:
St. Louis, MO : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Everyday; E4
Notes:
In this review of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores Peter Wolfe discusses the plot and states, "This little book redefines joy. Gabriel García Márquez, having honed his craft for decades, needs only a couple of pages both to grab our attention and to win our trust. From the start, no clumsy syntax, descriptive overload, or psychological murk fouls his art."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 9, 2005
Published:
Salon.com
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Notes:
In this article Allen Barra reviews Memories of My Melancholy Whores and also discusses the controversy around the book's plot, stating, "The relationship between the old man and the pubescent girl is giving some critics conniption fits. For instance, Adam Kirsch in the New York Sun: "That Mr. García Márquez expects the reader to salute an ancient man's victory over a child rather than see it as pathetic or monstrous, is the latest measure of his fiction's heroic contempt for reality."" He then goes on to state that "it seems a little late in the game to sic the p.c. police on the creator of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who, in "One Hundred Years of Solitude," published in 1967, sired 17 sons by 17 different women. And why, one wonders, are so many critics upset? Because the old man pays for his time with the girl? Perhaps because they want the strange relationship to be consummated?"
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 12, 2005
Published:
Vancouver, Canada : CanWest Interactive
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; F18
Notes:
Anderson critiques Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores and states that "the novel's narrative creeks with age, and its novella-length brevity suggests that García Márquez's stamina may be fading. Yet the author still manages to grace Melancholy Whores with passages of limber loveliness. "Sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love," he writes."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 12, 2005
Published:
Ontario, Canada : National Post
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Weekend Post; Books; WP16
Notes:
After describing the plot, Theo Tait concludes that the "point" is that "García Márquez threatens to present us with the horrifying spectacle of the old goat preying on the poor girl, and then endlessly defers it." He then goes on the state that "Memories of My Melancholy Whores seems like an old man's fever dream, full of bizarre, arresting meditations on love, nostalgia, and mortality."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 12, 2005
Published:
London, UK : Guardian Newspapers
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Guardian Review Pages; 16
Notes:
Alberto Manguel discuses the topic of Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores and states that "such stuff can, in the hands of great writers, make for splendid literature... Memories of My Melancholy Whores, however, never seems to extend beyond the mere smutty story."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 13, 2005
Published:
Bergen County, NJ : North Jersey Media Group
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Entertainment; E03
Notes:
In her article Jeanne A. Leblanc states "Oh, yes, there's plenty of sex, or at least memories of it. And there's certainly old age, delineated with blunt lyricism. But these are part of the setting, not the theme. For more than 50 years, García's fiction has been mainly about one subject: solitude. It is the curse of the unnamed narrator of "Memories," an elderly bachelor who lives alone in decaying mansion in an unnamed tropical city." This article is also published in Newsday (New York).
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 14, 2005
Published:
New York, NY : Associated Press
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Notes:
In this review Goldstein states "A work by García Márquez, who is 78, is always worth waiting for. Always. Few have written about the essence of life, love, and death nearly as well as he. (And kudos to the translator, too, Edith Grossman.) The best known of his previous works, "Love in the Time of Cholera" and "100 Years of Solitude," are grand works in any language. "Memories" is not in that class, but a smaller gem."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 15, 2005
Published:
New York, NY : VV Publishing Corporation
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; 41
Notes:
In this review Stosuy reviews Memories of My Melancholy Whores along with John Barth's Where 3 Roads Meet: Novellas, stating, "John Barth and Gabriel García Márquez's newest don't rank with their best, though the septuagenarian grandmasters probably aren't sweating it. In Where 3 Roads Meet and Memories of My Melancholy Whores, it's their self-possession that's so intriguing."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 19, 2005
Published:
London, UK : The Financial Times Limited
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; 38
Notes:
In his review of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Creasy compares the book to Roth's The Dying Animal and concludes, "While Memories of My Melancholy Whores has certain charm, it lacks the historical sweep of the earlier novel, or any similar sense of substantial national allegory. Nor are its claims to present passion as convincing as, say, Love in the Time of Cholera. In its favor, the book is only 128 pages long. It may console you to know that you won't be much older by the time you finish it."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 20, 2005
Published:
Portland, OR : The Sunday Oregonian
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Sunday Features; O20
Notes:
In her review Sarah Cypher states that "readers familiar with the eccentric ornamentation in García Márquez's other fiction will not find it here. But because the author is a master of his genre, magic and portent nevertheless glitter through the novel's plain weave, infusing images with the weight of symbols in an allegory. Which, thankfully, they are not. The novel is nimble and brief, and it uses the transformational power of love to rise above moralism."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 20, 2005
Published:
Edinburgh, Scotland : The Scotsman Publications
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
7
Notes:
After discussing the novel, Andrew Crumey concludes that "like Goethe's novella The Man Of Fifty, this book is about growing older and feeling limper. Marquez's comments on the subject, however, are disappointingly trite. "Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel". Even Peter Stringfellow has managed to say it more eloquently than that."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 20, 2005
Published:
Palm Beach, FL : The Palm Beach Newspapers
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Arts and Entertainment; 8J
Notes:
In his review, Scott Eyman concludes that "at all times, Memories of My Melancholy Whores is wise and funny, and cumulatively it's exhilarating. Above all, it's nimble - not a sentence longer than it needs to be, an amazing performance for a 40-year-old man, let along a 78-year-old man. Márquez has streamlined the labyrinths of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera and given us a jubilant fable about the liberation of infatuation."