Gabriel García Márquez’s posthumously published novel is unconvincing
Love and loneliness. Loneliness and love. These two motifs, these two codependent deities, underpin all of grand maestro Gabriel García Márquez’s fiction — from his bewitching magnum opus One Hundred Years of Solitude to the tumultuous romance of Love in the Time of Cholera. His final sultry, sun-soaked and unexpected work, Until August, which he attempted to complete while struggling with dementia, is a continuation of these oeuvre-defining themes. It’s a damn shame it’s half-baked. The circumstances under which Until August came to be written might, themselves, one day make a rather droll short story, perhaps even a sparky novella.
