This is it everyone- The most depressing book I have read. Ever. Yes. This book. Not the ones about the holocaust, brutal wars, awful diseases... this book. About an old man who has only ever slept with whores. I don't know why it got to me like it did, but I would read a few pages and feel physically sick to my stomach. It's not the subject matter (it's interesting), it's not the writing (he's Marquez)... it's just this sense of awfulness. This awful awful life he's lead, and what he has never known. What his little, vulgar life consists of.

Maybe Marquez is just too on his game here. He's just too good at creating this sense of emptiness, and this wasteland of a life. That isn't really all /that/ tragic. It's just so unutterably sad, I can't describe it.

I don't know what to rate it. I never finished it. And I haven't been brave enough to pick it up again since.