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Reading Gabriel García Márquez, known as "Gabo" to his friends, is like visiting a loveable rogue.

We all know the type: a little too loud, profane to the point of creating cringes in his followers, laughing at all the wrong jokes - most of them told himself, drinking too much, with a wild and flamboyant reputation, and yet all around him are rolled eyes and smiles and laughter. For this lover of life, for this fornicator of all things human, yet with a piety whose sincerity is questioned again and again and over and again found intact, this trickster god; we are willing to forgive and forgive and forget and laugh and smile. He is a devil, but he is our devil.

Gabo is to Latin American literature as Harry Caray was to Cubs fans.

So, we come to his 2004 novella Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Published when he was 77, this tells the story of an old bachelor journalist who, a frequenter of brothels and a customer of prostitutes for decades, on the eve of his 90th birthday arranges to meet a 14-year-old virgin prostitute.

Now, I lost some of you right there. But wait.

Many of you have read my review of Nabokov’s Lolita. His 1955 novel, brilliantly written, is about pedophilia. It is. It’s a wonderful book of literature with an outrageously unrepentant subject. Many will never know the genius poured into every page because they cannot, and understandably so, get past the story and its monster narrator.

This is not Lolita.

Yes, our protagonist makes this arrangement and has as such his intent. But then something else happens.

I have been accused before of spoilers in my reviews and for this I apologize and here I will be extra cautious because I do not want the readers of this exceptional short work, and I want to encourage its reading, to miss out on the fragile blooming flower that occurs in the brief telling.

Yes, there is an outrageous subject, and yes this represents a real-life crime whose real-life victims are young girls who should be protected. It does not make this subject more palatable that Márquez uses his charming mastery of language and of his description of his great love for life. But what he describes is not sex with a child.

I cannot say more except that Márquez has, in his own mischievous way, given us a glimpse into a love that is timeless and a hope that even into old age, we can continue to greet each sunrise with a wink and a nod, a song and even a dance. And love.