A Final Hurrah?

It is, without a doubt, that Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez is one of the most recognized and celebrated names in the ambit of Latin American if not world literature as a whole. With a career that spans decades, he boasts an oeuvre that spans diverse genres such as novels, short stories, essays, plays, and even screenplays. His extensive body of work earned him several accolades across the world, including the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. The final feather in his cap came in 1982 when he was awarded by the Swedish Academy with the Nobel Prize in Literature, widely considered the most prestigious literary prize in the world. His works dazzled the world. His works like One Hundred Years of Solitude, Of Love and Other Demons, and Love in the Time of Cholera remain seminal in contemporary literary discourses. They are ubiquitous in must-read lists such as the 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list.

It goes without saying that a foray into the works of Latin American literature will not be complete without a work by García Márquez. Affectionately referred to as Gabo or Gabito throughout Latin America, he is even cited by his fellow writers as among the most influential writers writing in Spanish. Despite passing away from pneumonia in 2014, his works keep making waves across the world. One Hundred Years of Solitude was recently adapted into a Netflix series, underscoring how García Márquez’s works transcend time and physical boundaries. In 2023, García Márquez’s kin surprised the literary world with the news of the release of a García Márquez novel. In March 2024, En agosto nos vemos was published posthumously. It was made available to Anglophone readers as Until August on García Márquez’s 97th birthday.

At the heart of Until August is Ana Magdalena Bach, a beautiful woman already in her forties. For nearly three decades, Ana Magdalena was happily married to Doménico Amarís, the equally good-looking director of a musical conservatory: they knew each other so well deep down that they ended up seeming like one and the same. Apart from his career, Doménico also excelled at table tennis and was a rhetor, a comedian, a dancer, and a chess player. They have also not fought. It was a picture-perfect marriage and there was nothing Ana Magdalena could ask for from her husband. They were happily married, with their happy union bearing two children who were on the cusp of entering adulthood. Their son was already the first cello with the National Symphony Orchestra. Michaella, their daughter, is hot-tempered and is determined in her resolve to be a nun.

She did not know why she’d changed, but it had something to do with the twenty-dollar bill she carried around at page 116 of her book. She had suffered unbearable humiliation, without a moment’s serenity. She had wept with rage from the frustration of not knowing the identity of the man she would have to kill for debasing the memory of a happy adventure.

Gabriel García Márquez, Until August

However, a noticeable shift in their dynamics took place when Ana Magdalena decided to visit her mother’s grave. Her mother asked to be buried on an out-of-the-way island over in the Caribbean. When she was forty-six, Ana Magdalena started making an annual pilgrimage to her mother’s grave. On the sixteenth of every August, she journeys to the small and isolated island to bring a bouquet of gladioli to place on the grave. It used to be an arduous journey to the underdeveloped island that lasted almost four hours in a canoe with an outboard motor. Her first trip left her terrified. Over the coming years, development made the island more accessible. Tourists brought interest and investment into the island. Hotels started to sprout and the motorboat was replaced by a ferry service that traveled twice daily to and from her home city which was never revealed.

During her eighth excursion, an impulse gripped Ana Magdalena. Without design, she seduced a man who, like her, was sitting alone in the hotel bar. She invited him to her room where they made love. After making love, he left a twenty-dollar bill between the pages of a book she was reading as a parting gift. This cheapened the experience into a mere transaction. It offended Ana Magdalena, who thought she was the one in control of everything. Nevertheless, the thrill of the adventure irreversibly altered Ana Magdalena’s life. Every year, she returned to the island to seduce and sleep with a stranger after visiting her mother’s grave. What ensued, however, was a series of disappointing paramours, occasionally disrupted by various elements. She encountered a swindler who pimped helpless widows, the probable murderer of two of them. Another time, she encountered a decent but dull insurance salesman.

She had always gone through life without looking at it, and only that year upon her return from the island did she begin to see it with chastened eyes. Ironically, Ana Magdalena looks forward to and dreads her next visit to the island. One side of her is fueled by the desire to escape her quotidian existence while the other side of her is anxious, prepared to refuse any man who approaches her. One part of her is disappointed with what she is doing to her marriage but another part of her is searching for the man who gave her the twenty dollars. Still, despite her apprehensions she makes her way to the island. With each encounter, Ana Magdalena was inevitably changing. Even her husband noticed every detail of the change, including her renewed smoking, her insomnia, and her overall detachment. She deflects his accusations by blaming their daughter.

Despite each new encounter, Ana Magdalena was haunted by the twenty-dollar bill. It was a relic from a moment of rebellion that opened doors of possibilities and even inquiries into who she was and the stability of her married life. Her clandestine adventures were slowly dismantling all the veneer of her marriage. She realized that if she could be unfaithful then her husband, the epitome of perfection, could also do the same. Her renewed boldness prompted her to ask her husband if he had always been faithful during their marriage. However, this went against Ana Magdalena’s initial stance: If what you want to know is whether I’ve gone to bed with anyone else, years ago you warned me that you didn’t want to know. With the illusion slowly crumbling, Ana Magdalena found herself slowly detaching from her family. Doménico was no longer the man she thought she had married. She started to feel like a stranger in her own home. Will they be able to make it through this rough patch?

The twenty-dollar man, whose memory embittered her, had opened her eyes to the reality of her marriage, sustained thus far by a conventional happiness that avoided disagreements in order not to stumble over them, the way people hide dirt under the rug.

Gabriel García Márquez, Until August

The Nobel Laureate in Literature originally planned Until August to be a collection of four stories. He started working on the book as early as 1997 and even read portions of the manuscript in September of that year at Georgetown University. He set aside working on the novel to work on Memoria de mis putas tristes (2004, trans. Memories of My Melancholy Whores). He pursued writing Until August but never felt satisfied with the story. After being struck by dementia, he never got to complete the manuscript. Before his death, García Márquez requested his children not to publish the incomplete novel. His sons originally planned to honor his wishes but upon re-reading the drafts of the novel in 2022, his sons decided to edit the story and publish it believing that the story has literary merit. This decision to go against their father’s wishes was not without criticism.

Within the vast and extensive García Márquez universe, Until August does earn its own literary stripes. In some ways, Until August is a digression from the mainstream Márquezan lore. For one, the story is bereft of vivid magical realism elements; this is the literary element that elevated the Colombian writer to global recognition. Further, it is his first book to feature a female main character. Nevertheless, Ana Magdalena was cast from the same García Márquez character mold. She was complex although, from the onset, she seemed timid and servile. She thought that she was equal to her husband, thus, she adapted to become like him. However, as layers were unpeeled, she realized that they never shared the same equal footing. She then turns into a woman scorned by love and contempt.

Ana Magdalena’s complexity as a character is further manifested in her moral quandaries, particularly the impasse she feels before every visit. Anxiety also seizes her upon her return home from the island. Like any individual, she had desires and vulnerabilities. She travels to the island not only to visit her mother’s grave but to seek a semblance of romance. Her yearning many can relate to. Ana Magdalena also encapsulates the major themes and subjects that the novel explores. The intricacies of marriage are one of the main drivers of the story. On one side, marriage provides comfort and a safe haven, a calm from the storm. At least, this was how her marriage made Ana Magdalena feel. However, lies can also permeate it. These lies – which often one refuses to confront until one is given no other recourse – hold the power to undo the entire structure. We deny these lies because of the facade that is before us.

She was astonished by the magician’s mastery with which he removed her clothes piece by piece, his fingertips barely touching her, like peeling an onion. At his first thrust she felt herself die from the pain and an atrocious shock as if she were a calf being carved up.

Gabriel García Márquez, Until August

In connection to marriage, the deceptively slender novel explicitly explores infidelity and faithfulness. In Ana Magdalena’s case, infidelity pierced the veil of illusion that kept her anchored in her married life. It forced her to confront realities that she previously dismissed in the belief that she and her husband were on the same page. It made her question married life. However, it was not only Ana Magdalena’s marriage that went under scrutiny. Revelations later on in the story prompted Ana Magdalena to confront her own life. There were more secrets to be unraveled, most of which she was not expecting. In a way, Until August is a story that makes us question if the people we look up to or love are the people we believe them to be. We often look beyond an individual’s flaws because it does not align with who we think them to be. We protect the images of them we have created in our minds.

On the technical aspect, the narrative style is straightforward and candid. Ana Magdalena’s emotional landscape was carefully laid out but readers were kept at a distance. Details of Ana Magdalena’s life – even the most quotidian – come alive with candid descriptions. We watch her get dressed, hail taxis, drink gin, and converse with her husband. Cultural touchstones propped the story. Music and musical references permeated the story. Ana Magdalena is often caught reading books that drop hints about the storyline. Among the books she was reading were Bram Stroker’s Dracula, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Albert Camus’s The Stranger, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, Silvina Ocampo’s The Book of Fantasy, Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, and Lazarillo de Tormes.

García Márquez’s oeuvre, it can’t be denied, is brimming with literary masterpieces that swept the world over. Until August, however, is one of his minor works. Nevertheless, it was not without its merits. It is his first novel featuring a female protagonist and also the first to be published posthumously. By and large, the novel captures the intricacies of marriage and extra-marital affairs through the story of Ana Magdalena while, at the same time, capturing the inner turmoil that her act of infidelity instigated. It was about desire and liberation but also about the portraits we painted in our minds of the people we love and care for. Until August is not as propulsive or is it brimming with magical realist elements that García Márquez is renowned for. Nevertheless, it is a welcome story from one of the world’s foremost storytellers.

Ana Magdalena Bach left the cemetery a different woman. She was trembling, and the driver had to help her into the taxi because she could not control her body’s shaking. Only then did she understand her mother’s determination to be buried there, on an island she visited three or four times a year, when she learned she was dying of a terrible illness in a foreign land. Only then did the daughter glimpse the reason her mother had taken those trips the six years before she died. She considered that her mother’s reason—her mother’s passion—might be the same as hers, and surprised herself with the analogy. She did not feel sad but rather encouraged by the realization that the miracle of her life was to have continued that of her dead mother.

Gabriel García Márquez, Until August
Book Specs

Author: Gabriel García Márquez
Translator (from Spanish): Anne McLean
Publishing Date: 2024
No. of Pages: 110
Genre: Literary

Synopsis

Sitting alone beside the languorous blue waters of the lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach contemplates the men at the hotel bar. She has been happily married for twenty-seven years and has no reason to escape the life she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels by ferry here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover.

Across sultry Caribbean evenings full of salsa and boleros, lotharios and con men, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire and the fear hidden in her heart.

Constantly surprising, joyously sensual, Until August is a profound meditation o freedom, regret, self-transformation, and the mysteries of love – an unexpected gift from one of the greatest writers the world has ever known.

About the Author

To learn more about Gabriel Garcia Marquez, click here.