The writing is beautiful but the story is odd and disturbing. I wonder...was the entire story a senior delusion? ( )

Review soon. ( )

This is a lovely book. The title is misleading, as the story is really about one particular whore, an untouched one, and the love of a 90 year old man who has previously never experienced it.
A must read, especially as we grow into our dotage, a reminder of the possibility of spring even in the depths of November. ( )

Perhaps Marquez meant this as an unreliable narrator homage to Nabokov, hoping that would overcome the rather unseemly subject matter regarding the sexualization of an underage girl. It does not succeed - no matter the author's gift for language and description, it is overall distasteful. not sure how other reviewers get to "love story" or "rich and poetic" or "redemption" but I can't. I will have to try another of his.

2 bones!! ( )

In an unspecified Caribbean seaside town in an indefinite year around 1950, the unnamed narrator – a playboy who has just turned 90 – falls in love for the first time. The object of his affections is “Delgadina”, an underage prostitute procured for him as a birthday present by an old acquaintance who runs one of the town brothels. Over a number of nocturnal encounters during which he is happy to merely observe and sleep next to the young woman, the protagonist finds value in abstinence and concludes that “sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love”.

The story itself is unlikely and, frankly, not particularly remarkable. What makes it striking is the way it is told - the sensuous beauty of the language, the wry observations about love and getting old, the magically shimmering descriptions, the prose glowing with a Latinate passion which is retained in translation (by veteran Spanish-to-English translator Edith Grossman). Newcomers to Gabriel Garcia Marquez should start here before moving to his longer, more demanding novels. ( )