Love in the Time of Cholera 
asked by jdog on November 24, 2006 1:02 AM
In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermino Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.
With humorous sagacity and consummate craft, García Márquez traces an exceptional half-century story of unrequited love. Though it seems never to be conveniently contained, love flows through the novel in many wonderful guises--joyful, melancholy, enriching, ever surprising.
With humorous sagacity and consummate craft, García Márquez traces an exceptional half-century story of unrequited love. Though it seems never to be conveniently contained, love flows through the novel in many wonderful guises--joyful, melancholy, enriching, ever surprising.
Reviews
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I so do not understand all the rave reviews on this book. I read it recently for a book club selection, and let me tell you, If I didn't have to read it, I would have put it down after the first twenty pages, and never picked it up again. I found it to be dark, depraved, disgusting, and depressing! An examination of love in all it forms? Hardly! These characters were just plain goofy. I finally figured it out towards the end of the book, these characters were so miserable because they were lost spiritually. They were looking to other humans to provide them with true love, and that is just barking up the wrong tree. I am giving it one star only for the rich use of language.
reviewed by goonball on November 27, 2006 7:43 PM
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"Love in the Time of Cholera", an arresting tale of unrequited love, dramatically chronicles a 50-year love triangle set in Columbia, spanning from roughly 1880 to 1930. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, with an intensity that rivals the classics, explores the concept that suffering for love is akin to a genre of nobility. Based on the perception that love-sickness is a literal infirmity, the author effectively uses cholera throughout the novel as a metaphor for love - love as a malady comparable to a devastating ailment.
The condemned vertices of the love triangle include the obsessive lyricist, Florentino Ariza, who falls desperately and dangerously in love with the beautiful headstrong Fermina Daza. After meeting only briefly, the two commence an intense 3-year romance-by-letter. As years pass and Daza matures, she ultimately casts off any feelings towards the romantically love-sick Ariza, and instead, offers her hand in matrimony to the practical and respectable Doctor Juvenal Urbino - a specialist in overcoming the wide sweep of choleraic outbreaks.
Heartbroken and rejected by the only woman he will ever truly love, Florentino Ariza does everything in his power to try to forget Daza, to no avail. And so, for over 50 years, he is left to be tormented by his passion for the woman he cannot forget, attempting to move on and yet hoping all the while she will return to him, even in the winter years of his life.
The touching bitter-sweet conclusion to the severity of "Love in the Time of Cholera" will be sure to satisfy.
The condemned vertices of the love triangle include the obsessive lyricist, Florentino Ariza, who falls desperately and dangerously in love with the beautiful headstrong Fermina Daza. After meeting only briefly, the two commence an intense 3-year romance-by-letter. As years pass and Daza matures, she ultimately casts off any feelings towards the romantically love-sick Ariza, and instead, offers her hand in matrimony to the practical and respectable Doctor Juvenal Urbino - a specialist in overcoming the wide sweep of choleraic outbreaks.
Heartbroken and rejected by the only woman he will ever truly love, Florentino Ariza does everything in his power to try to forget Daza, to no avail. And so, for over 50 years, he is left to be tormented by his passion for the woman he cannot forget, attempting to move on and yet hoping all the while she will return to him, even in the winter years of his life.
The touching bitter-sweet conclusion to the severity of "Love in the Time of Cholera" will be sure to satisfy.
reviewed by ragtop on November 27, 2006 8:10 PM
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Admittedly, this may not be the best of Garcia Marquez, but considering the fact that the man is a genius (I dare you to find a single adverb in any of his books), his "not the best" still stands head and shoulders above most of what you will read in your lifetime.
The novel certainly has its flaws. On the first page you are drawn into an enigmatic suicide which is dropped without resolution and never brought up again. It is not like Garcia Marquez to leave a whole plot line unfinished. But there you have it, as obvious as a boil on the end of your nose; you are indeed left hanging.
The other main flaw is that Florentino is not an admirable character. He may have waited a lifetime for his one true love (and proclaimed himself a virgin after sleeping with, how many women?), but most of us will instantly stop feeling any kind of sympathy for him when he seduces a child. That is called "rape" by anybody's standards.
Where Garcia Marquez went wrong was mixing too much truth with fiction. Whenever a novelist directly bases his characters on actual people (his parents in this case) he is shackled by reality. You could say that novelists always portray reality, in an idealized manner. But mixing the two seldom works. In this case, it is the downfall of this book to have made the attempt.
By the same token, basing his characters on real people also produces the book's most shining moments. Garcia Marquez' description of Fermina as a glorified servant to a "perfect husband" who never picks up his socks is right on the money. By the end of her marriage Fermina has no idea who she is. I do not think you will find a more scathing, tender, contradictory, humorous and completely realistic portrait of a long-term marriage anywhere. This is what makes this book brilliant, and what makes Garcia Marquez such a fabulous writer. He portrays life completely without blinders (and for this he is called a "magical realist"), yet with the compassion of a saint.
Many of our greatest masterpieces are flawed - Michelangelo's Pieta features a Mary younger than her martyred son, Manet's Olympia has a hand like a dead fish, and so on (I could go on forever) - but they are still masterpieces, and they are still beloved. This book falls into that category. It might have been better, but in its present form it contains so many poetic, magnificent and haunting truths that one has no other choice but to take it on its own terms.
The novel certainly has its flaws. On the first page you are drawn into an enigmatic suicide which is dropped without resolution and never brought up again. It is not like Garcia Marquez to leave a whole plot line unfinished. But there you have it, as obvious as a boil on the end of your nose; you are indeed left hanging.
The other main flaw is that Florentino is not an admirable character. He may have waited a lifetime for his one true love (and proclaimed himself a virgin after sleeping with, how many women?), but most of us will instantly stop feeling any kind of sympathy for him when he seduces a child. That is called "rape" by anybody's standards.
Where Garcia Marquez went wrong was mixing too much truth with fiction. Whenever a novelist directly bases his characters on actual people (his parents in this case) he is shackled by reality. You could say that novelists always portray reality, in an idealized manner. But mixing the two seldom works. In this case, it is the downfall of this book to have made the attempt.
By the same token, basing his characters on real people also produces the book's most shining moments. Garcia Marquez' description of Fermina as a glorified servant to a "perfect husband" who never picks up his socks is right on the money. By the end of her marriage Fermina has no idea who she is. I do not think you will find a more scathing, tender, contradictory, humorous and completely realistic portrait of a long-term marriage anywhere. This is what makes this book brilliant, and what makes Garcia Marquez such a fabulous writer. He portrays life completely without blinders (and for this he is called a "magical realist"), yet with the compassion of a saint.
Many of our greatest masterpieces are flawed - Michelangelo's Pieta features a Mary younger than her martyred son, Manet's Olympia has a hand like a dead fish, and so on (I could go on forever) - but they are still masterpieces, and they are still beloved. This book falls into that category. It might have been better, but in its present form it contains so many poetic, magnificent and haunting truths that one has no other choice but to take it on its own terms.
reviewed by flow on November 29, 2006 1:00 AM
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A grotesque soap opera. Whatever Marquez's style of writing is, this book is beyond me. I found NOTHING special about the book. Florentino Ariza falls in love with Fermina Daza when he is in his teens but she marries somebody else. The book talks about his "passionate" love while he waits for her husband to die, which does happen in 50 years.
In the meantime, he has an infinite number of liasons which Marquez takes great pains to elaborate. The book is without any style or substance and is a disgrace to marriage and love specifically and humanity in general.
In the meantime, he has an infinite number of liasons which Marquez takes great pains to elaborate. The book is without any style or substance and is a disgrace to marriage and love specifically and humanity in general.
reviewed by csean85 on November 29, 2006 4:13 AM
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I would recommend this book, not as gripping and captivating as One Hundred Years of Solitude but still interesting.
reviewed by ibook on November 29, 2006 11:58 AM