Steven R. Kraaijeveld's Reviews > Until August

"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." (101-102)

The marketing slogan—The Lost Novel—on the front cover of this edition of Gabriel García Márquez's novel, Until August, is willfully incorrect. The novel was never lost. Nor was it originally intended to be a novel—Gabo had originally planned for it to be a collection of four stories loosely connected by the protagonist (the only female protagonist in his oeuvre), Ana Magdalena Bach. At the time of his death, the novel remained unfinished. Suffering from dementia near the end of his life, Gabo was unable to follow the plot of the novel sufficiently to tie the work together. He was satisfied with the development of the protagonist (she is an interesting character!) but not with the plot of the 'final' version of the novel. In fact, before his death, Gabo requested that his sons destroy the novel. His family initially respected his wishes, but eventually decided to publish the novel. In the preface to this edition, Rodrigo and Gonzalo García Barcha write:

"Judging the book to be much better than we remembered it, another possibility occurred to us: that the fading faculties that kept him from finishing the book also kept him from realizing how good it was. In an act of betrayal, we decided to put his readers' pleasure ahead of all other considerations. If they are delighted, it's possible Gabo might forgive us. In that we trust." (ix)

I do think that the novel delights; parts of it do, at least. The language and descriptions are often beautiful. The plot is not spectacular and is clearly unfinished, but there is an idea behind it that intrigues.

Having read all of Gabo's fiction, I was always going to read this; but I am not going to rate Until August, for many of the same reasons that I did not rate Kafka's letter to his father. I think you'll understand why.