UNTIL AUGUST by Garcia Marquez

A great little page turner that sketches the complicated dance of love and sex, ultimately revealing the fragility of human connections.

Every August 16th the protagonist, Ana Magdalena Bach, goes to an island to visit and lay flowers at her mother’s grave. But one night, while on the island, she meets a man that she ends up having an affair with, an encounter that will hunt and ultimately change her life completely.

From this point forward she is going to try and replicate this very encounter every year with a different men.

Ana Magdalena Bach, besides being a middle-aged married women, was also very lonely, in her own words: “at my age every woman is alone”, revealing to us the subtle theme of solitude in this novella. As we later find out, her husband is far from being a saint either.

I liked that there was a sense of ritual to Ana’s actions. The visits and the sexual encounters are presented in this particularly repetitive way that is meant to try and recreate a moment in her past.

His portrayal of Ana Magdalena’s vulnerability feels raw and universal, her hunger for passion and uninterrupted guilt lingers long after the final page.

This book might not be one of Garcia’s masterpieces as unfortunately this was the product of his battle against his diminishing memory, but to me it was a wonderful read, once I’ve started it, I couldn’t put it down.