Lunchtime read: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

The slim novellas by Gabriel Garcia Marquez are always good for a lunchtime read. They rake you to a different world almost instantly. Plus they usually have a tight story concerning an aspect of love that are not confined to the first stages in teenage years.

This story concerns a 90 year old bachelor who has decided that to celebrate his birthday he is going to go to the whore house and sleep with a virgin. He has never slept with a woman he did not pay and has had hundreds of encounters in his lifetime.

But as he gets older it is the powerful allure of not only proving to himself that he still has the ability but also the attraction of virgin territory that motivates his call to the brothel and his request.

It is fulfilled in the shape of a 14 year-old girl who is waiting for him asleep in the room. He leaves her sleeping and gets ready but she resists him by carrying on sleeping so he lies next to her and hears the midnight chime and the dawn of his 90th birthday.

More tomorrow…