Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 22, 2005
Published:
New York, NY : The New York Times Company
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Section E; Column 1; The Arts/Cultural Dest;
Notes:
In reviewing the book, this article by Michiko Kakutani criticizes Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores, stating that "like the entries in his 1993 collection "Strange Pilgrims," this tale demonstrates that the shorter form of the story does not lend itself to Mr. García Márquez's talents: his penchant for huge, looping, elliptical narratives that move back and forth in time is cramped in this format, as is his desire to map the panoramic vistas of an individual's entire life. The fertile inventiveness that animated his masterpiece "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is decidedly muted in these pages, and the reverence for the mundane realities of ordinary life, showcased in more recent works , seems attenuated as well. As a result, "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" feels like brittle little fable composed on automatic pilot."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 26, 2005
Published:
Australia : Nationwide News
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Notes:
Weatherup praises Memories of My Melancholy Whores and states, "In his first work for ten years, Márquez revisits his famous "magic realism" to spin out "a fairy tale for the aged that celebrates the belated discovery of amorous passion in old age.""
John Mcgourty, Janet Hughes, Fiona Russell, and Ray Chesterton
Format:
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 26, 2005
Published:
Sydney, Australia : Nationwide News
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
FEATURES; Saturday Books; 91
Notes:
In this short review of Memories of My Melancholy Whores, John Mcgourty states, "While not his best, this 115-page novella gives a taste of Márquez's story-telling talent." He also states that the book is "a great first read for those intimidated by Márquez's weightier tomes."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 27, 2005
Published:
Washington, DC : News World Communications
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; On Books; B06
Notes:
In this critique and review of the book Carol Herman states, "Readers had every reason to hope that Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez's latest novel, "Memories of My Melancholy Whores," his first work of fiction in 10 years, would be something to behold. But there is a wrinkle, and it rests in the limitations of the book's own central and disturbing act of "beholding.""
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 27, 2005
Published:
San Antonio, TX : San Antonio Express-News
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; 6J
Notes:
In his review Gregg Barrios states, "Since this is the first fiction in a decade form Márquez, one can see why his publisher was eager to release it separately from new fiction Gabo (as he is known to his fans worldwide) is working in. Sorry to report this isn't one of his better works, nor is it his "Death in Venice" or his "The Old Man and the Sea.""
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
December 1, 2005
Published:
Washington, DC : National Public Radio
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Notes:
Accessed on 31 January, 2008. Alan Cheuse states, "What he [Gabriel García Márquez} gives us this time around is a memorable love story in a minor, minor key... he falls madly for the girl and finds a new life at an age, as he himself puts it, "when most mortals have already died.""
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
December 4, 2005
Published:
San Francisco, CA : The Chronicle Publishing Co.
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Sunday Review; Our Editors Recomended; M2
Notes:
In this review the author states, "At a little more than 100 pages, "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is really more a novella than a novel and could appear to be a trifle in a large body of work. It is the author's first work of fiction in a decade, which is cause enough to celebrate, but it is also his best work of fiction in the past 20 years. It is an existential riff on the many qualities of love and a skillfully controlled and disciplined work of literature."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
December 4, 2005
Published:
Richmond, VA : Richmond Newsppers
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books & Authors; K-3
Notes:
In this article Judi Goldenberg discuses the novellas of both Gabriel García Márquez and John Barth. She states about Memories of My Melancholy Whores that "the most memorable feature of this novella is not its occasionally seedy plot but rather its lucid, clean-flowing, unsentimental yet achingly intimate prose, drawing the reader in despite any misgivings."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
December 4, 2005
Published:
Atlanta, GA : The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Arts & Books 5K
Notes:
In this review John Freeman states, "The coin of a prostitute's transaction is not love but debasement. In Gabriel García Márquez's new novella, "Memories of My Melancholy Whores," the Nobel Laureate uses this truth to skewer an aging newspaper columnist who believes, on the eve of his 90th birthday, that he has found true love in a bordello."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
December 6, 2005
Published:
Australia : Nationwide News Pty
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
News; 6
Notes:
Glen Morrison states, "Gabriel Gracía Márquez plumbs the nature of love and sex in his first literary offering in more than ten years, Memories of My Melancholy Whores."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
December 8, 2005
Published:
McLean, VA : Gannett Company
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Life 4D
Notes:
In this review Dierdre Donahue states, "Any writing from Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel García Márquez is an event. The Colombian-born author wrote one of the great literary masterpieces of the past century, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Unfortunately, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, his first work of fiction in a decade, is pretty thin and a real letdown compared with his brilliant autobiography, Living to tell the Tale, published in 2003."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
August 18, 2005
Published:
Champaign, IL : Illini Media
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Notes:
Beitzel states about Love in the Time of Cholera, "Garcia manages to create a very compelling love story in which nothing happens between the protagonists for fifty years. Yet it is not a slow read, nor boring in any way."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
December 17, 2005
Published:
Ontario, Canada : Toronto Star Newspapers
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; C4
Notes:
"In the recently published first volume of his memoirs, Living to Tell the Tale, Gabriel García Márquez makes it clear right from the beginning that his autobiography won't just be about what really happened. His memory of events is in various places irreconcilable with "the facts." It is an old magical realist's dream of the past, not an attempt at historical recovery. Memories of My Melancholy Whores is a short novel, a novella really, written in much the same spirit."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
December 17, 2005
Published:
Ontario, Canada : Toronto Star Newspaper
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; D10
Notes:
In reviewing García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Tong states, "The premise sounds creepy, but García Márquez can find a liberating sense of wonder anywhere... Memories of My Melancholy Whores isn't about sex or love, anyway -- it's about the limits and freedoms of age, the "risks of being alive," as the narrator puts it."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
January 6, 2006
Published:
Orange County, CA : OC Weekly, Inc
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Books; 26
Notes:
In the article Bonca states, "García Márquez is in his late 70's now, and his latest work, Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores, is a novella that, like the last few works by Issac Singer, feels at once modest and brazen, magisterial and bizarre, breaking no new ground but summing up a career's worth of imaginative creation in a little fable of head-shakingly absurd sweetness."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
January 7, 2006
Published:
Montreal, Canada : CanWest MediaWorks
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
Weekend; Arts & Books; H7
Notes:
In reviewing Memories of My Melancholy Whores the author states, "The novel's narrative does creak 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 and pithy aphorisms."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
February 10, 2006
Published:
Madison, WI : The Daily Cardinal via U-Wire
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Notes:
"Fortunately, García Márquez was nowhere near done with prose, returning to form with his new novel, "Memories of My Melancholy Whores." A compelling and concise piece of work, Márquez proves that even after 15 books he still has the skill and spirit to tell an unforgettable story." ""Melancholy Whores" is closer to Márquez's short stories than his novels in length -- only 115 pages -- but it is still a triumphant return to form. Márquez appears to get even better as the years go on. Hopefully, readers won't have to wait until Márquez himself turns 90 for his next book."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 23, 2005
Published:
Chicago, IL : Chicago Tribune
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
1
Notes:
"Even the language, though it cannot avoid being rich under [Gabriel García Márquez]'s fingers, is direct. Though Spanish usually becomes shorter when rendered in English, the excellent [Edith Grossman] translation and the original Spanish version of 'Memories' are of roughly the same word count. García Márquez cunningly alludes to this economy when he quotes in the text from a Mexican poem that commends to writers given to verbosity 'torcerle el cuello al cisne,' which means 'to twist the neck of the swan.'"
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 20, 2005
Published:
New York, NY : Dow Jones & Company
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
D5
Notes:
"In 'Memories of My Melancholy Whores,' Mr. [Gabriel García Márquez]'s first new novel in a decade, an old bachelor journalist, who has slept with countless prostitutes in his life, decides to buy himself an unusual 90th birthday present: a night with a young virgin."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 18, 2004
Published:
Washington, DC : Ayuntamiento
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
27(47) : 12
Notes:
Memorias de mis putas tristes: "En su habitual sentido memorioso y sentencioso, GGM nos presenta un rosario de palabras que estaban echadas al olvido como son, por ejemplo, 'alvorazado' (los adolescentes de mi generación avorazados por la vida olvidar...'/Es decir, la ambición por la vida, por quererlo todo y ser voraces), 'camaján' (Hasta el ultimo camaján de la alcaldia...'/Una especia de holgazán que vive mantenido por los demás o alguien cuya corpulencia impone), 'venadas' (Pasaban pedaleando como venadas...'/Veloces, distraídas, asilvestradas y seductoras)."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 20, 2004
Published:
Miami, FL : Miami Herald Publishing
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
5A
Notes:
"En cambio, en la Ciudad de Mexico, donde Random House Mandadori y [Diana] hicieron un tiraje inicial de 100,000 libros, hubo librerías que se ingeniaron formas de recibir desde hace dos días la novela donde Gabo recrea una fascinación literaria que comparte con otros grandes escritores ante un argumento tan suscinto como inquietante: la incursión que hace un anciano en la frontera entre el sueño, el eros, el amor, y la muerte, escoltado por 'el arrullo de la respiración apacible' de una virgen."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 21, 2004
Published:
Miami, FL : Miami Herald Publishing
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
6D
Notes:
"El encanto de la mujer dormida, abandonada a su suerte, indefensa en el lecho, junto al amante que se satisface sólo con mirarla dormir, como en los cuentos de hadas, es 'la esencia del placer,' en Memoria de mis putas tristes, la reciente novela de Gabriel García Márquez, breve, intensa, y diáfana como sus primeros cuentos y la única ficción publicada por el autor en los úlitmos diez años."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
August 22, 2005
Published:
New York, NY : Reed Business Information
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
252(33) : 34
Notes:
The author states about Memoirs of My Melancholy Whores that "the narrator's wit and charm, however, are not enough to counterbalance the monotony of his aimlessness. Though enough grace notes are struck to produce echoes of eloquence, this flatness keeps the memories as melancholy as the women themselves."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 2005
Published:
New York, NY : Esquire Publisher
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
144(5) : 56
Notes:
This article reviews Memories of My Melancholy Whores. The author states, "No doubt the work will be clucked at severely by reviewers of a tender age and gender--although perhaps not so severely as they peck at Messers Mailer and Roth and other old cocksmen who lack the protection of Third World cachet. But any actual sin would be committed only if they failed to see that Memories is an elegant, sturdy meditation on regret, isolation, decay, and the inevitable perversity of redemption."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
November 2005
Published:
New York, NY : Harper & Brothers
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
311(1866) : 89-90
Notes:
John Leonard reviews "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" and states, "To be reductive and glib about Gabriel García Márquez's ravishing new novella, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, one could say that Death in Venice meets Lolita. Or that Ivan Ilyich hums along with J. Alfred Prufrock."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
June 1, 2005
Published:
New York, NY : Kirkus Reviews
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
73(11) : S8
Notes:
This article reviews "Memories of My Melancholy Whores." The author quotes Knopf's publicity director, Nicholas Latimer, and states, "Latimer acknowledges that he was initially 'disappointed' the book wasn't longer--but says that it doesn’t read like a short book."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
December 24, 2004
Published:
London, UK : Economist Newspaper Ltd
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
373(8404) : 85
Notes:
This article is a review of Gabriel García Márquez's 'Memories of My Melancholy Whores.' The article states "Absurd? Yes, and so brief that the reader feels short-changed. Even so, the book is beautifully executed, and it had a sort of moral. Great loves often force people to confront unpleasant truths about themselves, but since the great love in this case is not available for comment, the rebirth is entirely the old man's work. A re-examination is always possible, the author seems to say: all one needs is the trigger."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
January 1, 2003
Published:
Chicago, IL : American Library Association Pub. Board
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
99 : 809
Notes:
"This is the Spanish-language version of the great Colombian writer, which has been a best-seller around the world; the English translation is due to be published later in the year."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
March 2005
Published:
Wellesley, MA : KLIATT
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
39(2) : 34
Notes:
In this review of García Márquez's "Living to Tell the Tale" Pucci states that "this book provides a unique opportunity to follow the development of one of the most important writers of the 20th century."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
March 2005
Published:
Madrid, Spain : Ediciones Cultura Hispánica
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
657 : 71
Notes:
"En 'Memoria de mis putas tristes' se revela, con el ingenio de un quino barroco, el genio de la novela, su apuesta por el escándalo de vivir: entre los prostíbulos de la realidad, la fábula de la imaginación redimida."
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
October 2005
Published:
United States : Hispanic Publishing Corp.
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
18(10) : pp. 70-71
Notes:
Ambar Hernández reviews: "The Scorpion's Tale," by Sylvia Torti; "Memories of My Melancholy Whores," by Gabriel García Márquez; "Ball Don't Lie," by Matt de la Peña.
Secondary source, Reviews of Gabriel García Márquez's Books and Stories
Publication Date:
2004-2005
Published:
Kansas City, MO : University of Missouri-Kansas City
Location:
Library, University of Illinois
Related Item Details:
71(1)
Notes:
Fay reviews From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey, by Pascal Khoo Thwe and Living to Tell the Tale, by Gabriel García Márquez. Of Márquez's memoir she writes, "In reading Living to Tell the Tale, one never gets the sense that what is being documented is necessarily 'real.' Márquez was once quoted as having said, 'If you say there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants in the sky, people will believe you.'"