58.
Title: Memories of my Melancholy Whores
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Pages: 128
Genre: Fiction
Medium: Hardback
Acquisition:
Date Completed: August 4, 2012
Rating: *****

"The Professor" is an old man, and to celebrate the luck of reaching longevity he decides to celebrate his old age in the ordinary sort of way: he will deflower a very young virgin (the younger the better). 

Having never had sex that he didn't pay for (he claims), the Professor calls a madam whom he has known for much of his extended life, and she proclaims that it is impossible, that he is asking far too much, and that she will call him back within an hour. 

As he waits - both for the call, and then for his selected companion to wake from her sleep of utter exhaustion - the reader is treated to an account of some of his escapades, and his reflection on what it means to be old.  The protagonist demonstrates the conceit of the elderly, comfortable that his audience must be interested in his story simply because it is a story he wishes to tell.  The Professor is not an extraordinary man, nor is he even an interesting man, and yet there is charm in his narrative style, and it is this charm that captivates the reader and tricks the audience into believing he may actually be interesting.  

The rising action of the novel is minimal, as most is spent in past reflection of perhaps unusual convictions related to the evolving sexuality of a man, and the few relationships he has had with women (from his mother to a failed fiance to the few prostitutes whom he speaks of as people).  His frustration provides satisfaction for the audience, and the hard-won resolution is perfectly balanced.

Memories of my Melancholy Whores is fascinating and lyrical, and recommended. 

59. 
Title: The Fifth Child
Author: Dorris Lessing
Pages: 144
Genre: Fiction
Medium: Kindle
Acquisition: Recommend by Linda
Date Completed: August 24, 2012
Rating: *****

Before his birth, Harriett decides that her fifth child is a monster.  As he kicks and struggles in her womb - far too unlike the butterflies of her previous four children - she imagines herself in a struggle with the developing fetus, and wages war with sedatives and physical exertion.  This child is the unwanted child - the child who is conceived far too soon, the child who cannot be welcomed even before his birth, the child who is so different from his four fair older siblings. 

Although occasionally "Poor Ben," the fifth child is more often referred to as "the brute" or "the monster," and his family - Harriett most often - ponders from where this deformed and depraved being could have come - what goblin city or alien world could spawn such a creature.  He is the home-wrecker, the psychopath who seeks to harm his older, cherished siblings even in infancy, the freak of physical development whose strength marks him as something to be feared as opposed to a child to be loved. 

The Fifth Child is a horror story, but the true monsters aren't those identified by the protagonists.  Lessing's novel is a chilling tale of selfishness and cruelty which can leave the reader fearing of the monsters she shares, and those still to come.