The plot of this book is simple enough. On the eve of his ninetieth birthday, our unnamed protagonist–an undistinguished journalist and lifelong bachelor–decides to give himself “the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.” Actually reading the book there is much more to the simple plot. The ninety year old man has paid for sex his whole life and now wants to pay for sex with a virgin. While these two characters never have sex, he does start to fall in love with her.
The first chapter of this book was hard for me to get through. There are rape scenes, and this old man is disgusting. Once you get past the first chapter though the old man slowly becomes a more likeable character. When he firsts meets the adolescent girl he is going to have sex with, she is asleep. He attempts to have sex with her, but decides to stop as she resists by tensing her thighs.
The old man calls the young girl Delgadina, after a girl in a song that he sings to her constantly. The girl almost never speaks in the story, and when she does she makes no sense. The old man constantly talks to her about his past life and his travels. He also buys her gifts and attempts to teach her how to read.
There comes a time when he stops seeing the girl, and doesn’t see her for several months. He keeps on thinking that he sees her around town, but it’s not her that he sees. The old man asks the owner of the brothel to see her again. When she tracks the girl down and he is finally able to see her again, he is excited. The old man sees the girl again, but becomes angry because instead of looking like the innocent young adolescent she used to be she looks older and has been made up to look like a typical whore by the brothel owner. The old man is angry and yells at the girl and the owner of the brothel.
In the story, the old man says that this is the first girl he has ever fallen in love with. This is the only girl he ever really got to know and the only one he tried to stick with. He becomes unimpressed when he believes she looks like a common whore.
I’m giving this book 4 stars because that first chapter was very hard for me to get through, as well as a few other parts of the book. Memories of My Melancholy Whores is a very well written story. I really could have done with out the underage sex and rape scenes though.
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