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3.4 AVERAGE
3.4 AVERAGE
dark
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pedophilia
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Eh, not a fan of glamorizing this type of character. Written BEAUTIFULLY about very ugly stuff. Not gonna recommend to anyone who's sensitive to themes of pedophilia and rape. It was a bit disturbing for me tbh
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Trafficking
dark
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“I did not feel sorrow or fear but an overwhelming emotion at having lived long enough to experience it.”
In this book, Marquez writes a the story of a recently-nonagenarian bachelor and his birthday gift to himself: a night with a 14-year old virgin, except things don't turn out the way they seem. For multiple reasons, they never end up having sex. He falls in love, hard, instead--which shapes how he treats his old age and approach to life (or what's left of it). Political correctness aside, this is Marquez at his best. Beautiful prose, no gratuitous sex scenes (as he is very prone to), vividly mundane, and is not simply meandering/a writing exercise but has good reflections on life and aging.
There is not a single mention of wishing to become young again. Instead, the main character treats youth as such:
“my notion of youth was so flexible I never thought it was too late.”
which is such a lovely sentiment. He does not fall into the trap of nostalgia and the sunk cost fallacy of experiencing new things such as love at his old age. There is only the experiencing and the continual journey of his life, and the personal change that stems from it, which he lets happen without regard for the seeming brevity of the rest of his life. I like this forward-facing and irreverent attitude towards mortality most.
He is never jealous of Delgadina's youth, but he does adore it. He despises the artificial measures taken to make her seem older--but when she does visibly grow older it does not change his love. I am not so much interested on what Marquez has to say about love but more on his reflections on age. Like him, I am beginning to like the patina of the years and the value and sentimentality they imbue on objects. I am hoping to extend that appreciation to my life and its events, as Marquez did.
Quotes:
“I’m ugly, shy, and anachronistic”
“I have never done anything except write, but I don’t possess the vocation or talents of a narrator, have no knowledge at all of the laws of dramatic composition, and if I have embarked upon this enterprise it is because I trust in the light shed by how much I have read in my life. ”
“This was when I heard that the first symptom of old age is when you begin to resemble your father.”
“under the magical effect of that devastating evocation”
“Peace changed the city in a way that had not been foreseen or desired”
“languid waltz under the alameda of blossoming matarratón trees.”
“I was ignorant of the arts of seduction and had always chosen my brides for a night at random, more for their price than their charms, and we had made love without love, halfdressed most of the time and always in the dark so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were. ”
“He shook my hand and said goodbye with a sentence that might have been either good advice or a threat:
“Take good care of yourself.”
satanic attraction
“My engagement satisfied all the rituals of Christian morality on the terrace, with its Amazonian orchids and hanging ferns, of my fiancée’s house. ”
“The world is moving ahead. Yes, I said, it’s moving ahead, but it’s revolving around the sun. ”
“reality taught them that tomorrow was not what they had dreamed, and they discovered nostalgia. My Sunday columns were there, like an archeological relic among the ruins of the past, and they realized they were not only for the old but also for the young who were not afraid of aging. ”
“reactionary satrap’s blood-red pencil”
“Damn it, I thought, blushing is so disloyal.”
“And again, as always, after so many years we were still in the same place we always were.”
“When the cathedral bells struck seven, there was a single, limpid star in the rose-colored sky, a ship called out a disconsolate farewell, and in my throat I felt the Gordian knot of all the loves that might have been and weren’t.”
“shipwreck of the house.”
“Age isn’t how old you are but how old you feel.”
“Incredible: seeing and touching her in the flesh, she seemed less real to me than in my memory.”
“Blood circulated through her veins with the fluidity of a song that branched off into the most hidden areas of her body and returned to her heart, purified by love.”
“I was on the verge of ruin but well-compensated by the miracle of still being alive at my age.”
“I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.”
“the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love. ”
“All right, after all, she’s yours, but to me it sounds like a diuretic”
“In this way I learned how much my suffering had corrupted me. I did not recognize myself in my adolescent’s pain”
“I always had understood that dying of love was mere poetic license.”
“ I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the worl”
“The truth was that I could not manage my soul, and I was becoming aware of old age because of my weakness in the face of love.”
“In the end, it is impossible not to become what others believe you are”
“Today I look back, I see the line of thousands of men who passed through my beds, and I’d give my soul to have stayed with even the worst of them.”
“but the magic of the music created a celestial climate. ”
“in cases of extreme urgency gave them charitable love.”
“I was arranging my languishing papers, the inkwell, the goose quill, when the sun broke through the almond trees in the park and the river mail packet, a week late because of the drought, bellowed as it entered the canal in the port. It was, at last, real life, with my heart safe and condemned to die of happy love in the joyful agony of any day after my hundredth birthday.”
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I picked up this book bc it's GGM and I've been trying to pump myself up to reread 100 Years of Solitude. While the book was written beautifully, I could not get past the main characters goal or his past actions. I don't want to be in the mind or heart of someone who does those things.
7,5/10
Ik weet het nooit bij Marquez: vind ik dit nu goed of niet? Moet ik dit goedvinden omdat het zo hoort? Vragen! Angsten! Dilemma's! Paniek!
Ik weet het nooit bij Marquez: vind ik dit nu goed of niet? Moet ik dit goedvinden omdat het zo hoort? Vragen! Angsten! Dilemma's! Paniek!
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes