Until August, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The final novel from Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Anna Magdalena Bach, a middle-aged woman, is married and has two children. Every August she takes a trip to the Caribbean island where her mother is buried and leaves flowers. One year on this trip she meets a man in a bar and boldly asks him up to her room. For several years after, she repeats this act of infidelity, but with a different man each time, and in differing circumstances. Eventually Anna Magdalena discovers a secret her mother has long held, one which adds particular meaning to her own double life.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was working on Until August in the years before his death, during which he was suffering from dementia. It’s a surprisingly enjoyable read, an absorbing if minor story about a woman’s meditation on her mother’s death and her quest for self-discovery. While the story sounds sordid (Anna Magdalena’s betrayals are never interrogated; in fact, they seem almost an open secret), Marquez manages a breezy, morally uncluttered atmosphere. The book perhaps most resembles the work of Anais Nin, an explorer of female sexuality and heightened consciousness. The clever, surreal ending will surprise readers with its indelible, Dali-esque image of death and desire.  

Until August, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Published by Viking. $35

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