James Womack at Literary Review:
The billing of Until August as Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘dementia novel’ is a simplification. Although García Márquez’s last years were marked by a falling away of his powers, and his brother confirmed a diagnosis of dementia in 2012, the manuscript was largely finished by 2004. An earlier version of the story, in a translation by Edith Grossman rather than Anne McLean, appeared in the New Yorker in 1999. The book as a whole seems to have been put away once García Márquez realised that he couldn’t pull off his intended structure: five stories of similar length, all with the same protagonist. Readers who want to examine this slip of a book pruriently, as a chance to see the shattered visage of a once-great writer, should look elsewhere.
This is not to say that there aren’t issues with its publication, as the preface to this translation makes clear. García Márquez himself was blunt: ‘This book doesn’t work. It must be destroyed.’
more here.