Getting Lost

I bought two books from Borders last week and I only managed to begin on one of them today. Could've started early as I got tied up in some other mundane matters -- but the wait was worth it! It's Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores. The other book, a compilation of short stories I gave it to my nephew whom I visited last Sunday at the hospital. I sort of gave it to him so that he could while his time away in that awful place.

I can still remember the smell of disinfectant. I imagine if I'm hospitalised I'd be a difficult patient.

I'm a big Marquez fan and I've been reading his novels ever since I got a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. Arrgh... exquisite stuff. Just like Time of Cholera and 100 Years of Solitude, Melancholy Whores has managed to bring me into that world where I'm just contented to be a listener and observer of lives I can't possibly experience. I just get lost in words.

I'm past writting synopsis here, but this is from the publisher -- just in case you're interested in the book.

"On the eve of his ninetieth birthday, our unnamed protagonist - an undistinguished journalist and lifelong bachelor - decides to give himself "the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin."" The virgin, whom an old madam procures for him, is splendidly young, with the silent power of a sleeping beauty. The night of love blossoms into a transforming year. It is a year in which he relives, in a rush of memories, his lifetime of (paid-for) sexual adventures and experiences a revelation that brings him to the edge of dying - not of old age, but, at long last, of uncorrupted love."


I couldn't wait for the paperback and had to be poorer by S$27.95