Book Review | Magical and unfinished, ‘lost’ novel leaves mysteries unsolved
In some ways the back story of the publication of this novel is as intriguing as the novel itself. It is an unfinished book and the author wanted it to be destroyed.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, one of the world’s greatest story tellers, died in 2014. Ten years after his death his children decided to publish Until August. This was against their father’s express wishes. It is now left to the readers to determine if the action of the children is an act of betrayal. It must be said that they examined all the drafts of the novel, carefully edited the text and what we have now is perhaps an imperfect work of the master: moments of sheer brilliance with patches of the banal. From this reviewer’s perspective, it is much better to have the book than not. It is not one of Marquez’s masterpieces but we can feel the stamp of the author in the texture of the writing. It is also the only book by Marquez in which the protagonist is a woman. Ana Magdalena Bach is in search of experiences which would enrich and later haunt her. But she is not afraid to challenge long-held values of the male dominated world and ready to take the consequences.
Every year on 16 August Ana Magdalena, a middle-aged woman, travels from the city to an unnamed island by ferry to lay a bunch of gladioli on her mother’s grave in an unkempt cemetery on a hilltop. Perhaps, Ana wonders, her mother chose this place for the spectacular view of island below. The island itself is poverty-stricken and Ana Magdalena checks into a rundown hotel where she has stayed every year. It is here that she has a passionate sexual encounter with an unknown stranger. In the morning, the stranger is gone leaving a twenty dollar bill between the pages of book she was reading. Ana searches in vain for the man who has left her shamed and humiliated.
Back home, her husband notices her changed personality. Ana, perhaps to rid herself of her guilt, forces her husband to confess to an act of infidelity. None of these actions have any clear motive and Ana would return to the island each year, lay the gladioli on her mother’s grave and find a new partner for the night. Each of these experiences transforms Ana till she discovers why her mother chose to be buried on that island. This, in brief outline, is the story.
The unevenness in the narration creeps into some of the encounters on the island. The descriptions are at times very ordinary, and no more than what we find in substandard romances. Here is one example: “She was astonished by the magician’s mastery with which he removed her clothes, piece by piece…” What redeems the story is the study of the alienation at home and Ana’s futile search for the men she met on the island only to discover that one of them had a deadly criminal past.
How Marquez wanted to end the novel we shall never know because his battle with dementia began before he could reach the ending. Publishing the book instead of destroying it was a brave decision. It is for posterity to judge its worth. For the reviewer, reading a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez remains an exhilarating experience, even if there is the odd blemish.
On a slightly different note, Franz Kafka, in his will had asked his literary executor to destroy all his works including The Trial and The Metamorphosis. Thankfully his instructions were ignored, because Gabriel Garcia Marquez found his inspiration from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.
The reviewer is a retired publisher.
Until August
Gabriel Garcia Marque
Penguin Viking
pp. 144; Rs 799
