A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes
I’ll admit that A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes: A Son's Memoir of Gabriel García Márquez and Mercedes Barcha (Harpervia) by Rodrigo García surprised me. I suppose I expected it to be insubstantial, somehow, a cash grab. But I’m fascinated by Gabo’s complicated legacy, and I knew it wouldn’t take that long to read, and my library had a copy, so . . . I gave it a shot.
I’m glad I did. I was surprised by the warmth and tenderness here, as well as some genuinely breathtaking prose. That, and just enough magical realism for my taste (hint: it involves a dead bird on Maundy Thursday; that part alone is worth the price of admission). Later in the book, Rodrigo García is at the morgue in Mexico City, standing by for the cremation of his father’s body. And this is how he renders that scene:
“I’m trying to build bridges in my mind between my living father and my dead father and my famous father and this father here in front of me, and I’m failing. I have an instinct to say something, and I think of it: ‘Well done.’ But I don’t say it out loud for fear of sounding earnest or sentimental. I want to take a photograph of him and I do so with my phone. Instantly I feel sick to my stomach with guilt and shame for having violated his privacy so violently. I delete the photograph and instead take one of the roses on his body. He would have been delighted that the pretty young woman worked on him. He would have flirted with her.”
