Book Review: Until August by Gabriel García Márquez (translated by Anne McLean)

Rating: 3.5⭐

Until August by Gabriel García Márquez (translated by Anne McLean) revolves around forty-six-year-old Ana Magdalena Bach and her annual visits (on the 16th of August) to the island where her mother is buried. Ana’s itinerary includes a visit to the cemetery where she places a bouquet of her mother’s favorite flowers and indulges in a one-night stand with a different man every year before she returns to her family – her musician husband of over two decades and her two adult children. One of her trysts ends in a humiliating gesture and she carries both the emotional and physical reminder of the same through the years. Every visit to the island and her experiences with the men she meets inspires her to reflect on her actions, her marriage and her family. In sparse prose we are given insight into her motivations, her internal conflict and her desire in a journey of self- explorations with a thought-provoking ending.

A departure (in terms of theme and approach) from the nature of Gabriel García Márquez’s more famous works, this is not the author at his best but for those of us who have enjoyed the author’s work in the past, it won’t be difficult to appreciate the segments that shine with author’s brilliant writing. Sparse prose, But sadly, that is all we can expect from this short novella. I have no doubt had this manuscript been developed into a full-length novel with well-fleshed-out characters, and their motivations and relationships explored deeper; this would have been a worthy addition to the author’s oeuvre.

Please read the Preface to the novel where the author’s sons discuss their decision to publish this novella posthumously despite his wishes to discard the draft manuscript. A segment of this novella (translated by Edith Grossman) was previously published (1999) in the form of a short story.

I appreciate the publisher including printed pages from the author’s unfinished manuscript in the end pages of the hardcover edition. This in itself makes this a copy I will cherish as a part of my personal collection just like my treasured hardback edition of Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky that includes similar material between its covers.

- Do I regret reading this book? No

- Do I think this unfinished manuscript should have been published as a novella? Probably not.

- Am I happy that I could read part of what could have been another masterpiece written by one of

my favorite authors? Absolutely

Many thanks to Knopf for the gifted copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Note: The short story Meeting in August (translated by Edith Grossman) was published in the December 6, 1990 issue of The New Yorker Magazine and is available in the Archives section.