It is a slim volume, a quick read and an intriguing exploration of the mysteries of human emotions and the never-satisfied search for love in the course of a lifetime. Highly recommended. Review by Desiree Stead
(Quote from source) Constantly surprising and wonderfully sensual, “Until August” is a profound meditation on freedom, regret, and the mysteries of love, from one of the greatest writers the world has ever known.
Ana Magdalena Bach is 46 years old and has been happily and faithfully married for 27 years. She and her musician husband enjoy a close loving and mutually passionate relationship, have two beautiful children and live a good life.
Every year, on the anniversary of her mother’s death in August, Ana Magdalena Bach takes the four-hour ferry crossing from the mainland to the island where her mother chose to be buried. She travels alone to spend time at her mother’s grave, and every year she lays a bouquet of gladioli on the grave. She stays in the same small hotel on each occasion and returns to the mainland on the early ferry the next morning.
On the routine visit in this, her 46th year, Ana Magdalena makes an impulsive move which will affect her life, her marriage, her very personality. To quote from the Marques’ text “She felt bold enough to take a step that had never occurred to her in her entire life, not even in her dreams and she took it without any mystique…”
Until August was to be the last book that Marquez wrote. His health was failing, his memories fading and he had become increasingly frustrated and unhappy with his work. The many revisions and rewrites he penned are discussed in the Editor’s Notes in the final chapter after the end of this book. When the Novella was finally completed Marquez was still dissatisfied with it, saying: ”This book doesn’t work It must be destroyed.”
For more than 10 years after his death, no-one had ever heard about Until August. It was the decision of Marquez’ two children to go against the wishes of their father and to publish the book, anyway. This is how this “last novel” came to the attention of the reading public at last.
The prose is exquisite, the story fascinating and the themes of love, desire and searching are recognisably the work of the acutely perceptive master storyteller.
Highly recommended – Desiree Stead
Until August is published by Penguin Random House SA: ISBN 9780241703779
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