By Roy Boland
FICTION
Until August
Gabriel García Márquez
Viking, $35
The Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) is the greatest Hispanic prose writer since Cervantes. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), a modern classic of magical realism, has sold more than 50 million copies worldwide. However, he did not rest on his laurels, constantly experimenting with different modes of storytelling: the baroque, postmodernism, literary melodrama, historical biography, fictional autobiography and the erotic, among others.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s posthumous novel possesses some of his trademark qualities.Credit: Getty
A joke is circulating in Colombia that García Márquez, a noted prankster, decided to surprise the world with a novella composed on the other side of the grave: Until August, published to great fanfare in the Spanish-speaking world on March 6, almost 10 years after his death, on the date when he would have celebrated his 97th birthday. Translations in English and numerous other languages soon followed, with widespread coverage in traditional and social media.
The real story of the publication of Until August is long, complicated and poignant. The splendid English edition contains a prologue by García Márquez’s two sons, and a postscript by the editor, which together trace the origin of this novella of 107 pages to March 1999, whereupon the author shelved it.
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When he returned to it in 2003-04, he was in remission from lymphatic cancer and struggling with dementia, so, in frustration, he ordered his sons to “destroy” the multiple drafts because “the book wasn’t getting anywhere”.
Subsequently, he changed his mind, telling his sons to do whatever they liked with his papers after his death, an instruction that relieved them of any ethical doubts about publishing Until August posthumously. The editor clarifies that he made only absolutely necessary emendations to García Márquez’s final version, whose literary merits or flaws belong to the author.
Under the circumstances, it does not surprise that Until August betrays some signs of its fraught genesis, with some repetitions, contradictions and occasional bland language. However, it possesses trademark García Márquez qualities, including a captivating plot, an intriguing protagonist, a disciplined structure, poetic descriptions, crisp dialogue, melodrama and intimations of magical realism.
The reader can sense the author’s smile as he transforms raunchy erotic encounters into parodies of scenes in telenovelas (lurid Latin American soap operas). Skilfully, he inserts cultural references that comment upon the novella’s themes. For example, an early mention of Bram Stoker’s Dracula foreshadows the gothic denouement, involving a coffin and bones, while Mozart’s Così fan tutte evokes the merry-go-round of infidelities in the story. Overall, this is a well-wrought, provocative and entertaining novella. Anne McLean’s translation is clear, fluent and captures the nuances of the original Spanish version.
Until August was intended to form a trilogy with Of Love and Other Demons (1994) and Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004). These are novellas set on the Caribbean coast of Colombia and recount erotic fantasies (disturbing in the first two cases) by protagonists of mature or advanced age. What makes Until August different is that for the first time García Márquez’s protagonist is a woman, whose psychological, emotional and sexual tribulations take centre stage.
Eros, Thanatos and Oedipus define the life of Ana Magdalena Bach. She is an attractive, cultured 46-year-old woman with a “huge, athletic, and gracefully handsome husband” with whom she enjoys a rollicking sex life. However, a cloud hangs over her otherwise “happy marriage”: she is still mourning her mother, who, for unknown reasons, decided to be buried eight years ago on a “foreign” island.
Ana Magdalena makes an annual pilgrimage on a ferry to deposit flowers on her mother’s grave on the anniversary of her death. During her visits, she communicates with her mother, who miraculously answers her in the voice of strangers. Whether this is a case of magical realism or wishful thinking by Ana Magdalena is for the reader to interpret.
Her routine continues until her eighth trip, when totally out of character, she invites a man to her hotel room, where they engage in torrid sex. Afterwards she is left feeling like a “whore”, but the encounter leads her to question her marriage, setting her off on an addiction to annual one-night stands, not all consummated. As a result of these, she feels like a woman reborn, liberated and empowered.
Whether Ana Magdalena emerges as a feminist is a moot point. Only if feminism means featuring as “the protagonist of her own narrative”, being neither secondary nor subservient to men, and pleasuring as much as being pleasured, does the label fit.
On the other hand, glaring paradoxes emerge in Ana Magdalena’s behaviour. She resents her husband’s lies, but has no compunction in lying to him. She wants the freedom to enjoy infidelities, but reacts murderously when he acknowledges an affair with a colleague. When their unmarried daughter reveals that she uses an intra-uterine device, Ana Magdalena calls her a “whore”.
In the end, Ana Magdalena discovers the secret of her mother’s decision to be buried on the island. In Oedipal terms, she has found her mother, who, in death, restores order to her daughter’s life and saves her marriage. Perhaps rather than a feminist story, García Márquez has written a parable inspired by the first line in his play Diatribe of Love Against a Sitting Man (1988): “Nothing resembles hell as much as a happy marriage.”
Roy Boland is honorary professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at the University of Sydney.
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