Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 348 pages
Orbis Terrarum: Colombia; What's in a Name: medical condition; 1% well read; Latin American Challenge
Fiction or non-fiction? Genre?
fiction; it's described as a romance at Sparknotes which I'm not sure I agree with but I'll discuss that later
What led you to pick up this book?
It's a book I've heard of in many contexts: it's an Oprah pick from a few years ago, it makes many book lists of important books, Marquez is a Nobel winning author, and it seemed like a definitive book to read for the Latin American Challenge. Marquez's other book, One Hundred Years of Solitude has more polarizing reviews and I've seen a few reviews for this one that made me think it would be a better fit for me.
Summarize the plot, but don't give away the ending!
Florentino Ariza falls in love with Fermina Daza when they are teenagers. She ends up rejecting him and marrying a doctor and Florentino Ariza swears his undying love. Fifty-one years and 622 affairs later, he gets his chance to proclaim his love to Fermina Daza again.
What did you like most about the book?
I liked the setting and the time period - turn of the last century in some unknown Caribbean location. I was interested in seeing how the two main characters would end up together at the end.
At times the writing was lyrical and would lull me along with the story, but at other times I would read a paragraph twice to understand what was being described.
I liked Fermina Daza as a character. She seemed very strong, and opinionated in a time when women were not treated very well. She survived on her own terms for the most part and the men in her life dominated her only in the ways she let them.
What did you like least?
I didn't like that the chapters had no breaks within them. Fifty to seventy pages written with no pause, changing from character to character and from one back story to another.
I didn't like the details for minor characters that would appear for several paragraphs and then not appear again, mostly in describing Florentino Ariza's lovers.
The theme of love as a plague, a sickness didn't resonate with me. I thought Florentino wasn't really in love with Fermina, rather he saw her as some ideal that he had to possess. He never really knew her and by the time he got to know her, she wasn't the same person at all that he originally fell in love with. He could better be described as a stalker, watching her from a far, waiting and setting up situations for them to meet.
The depiction of aging as the Worst Thing Ever. The first character in the book, a friend of the doctor's kills himself rather than get too old; Fermina's daughter at one point proclaims that seventy year olds making love is 'disgusting.' The description of Fermina naked when she was seventy was not at all flattering and was used to show that women do not age gracefully, where as the male was not so graphically described - he just couldn't get it up after seeing her.
Have you read any other books by this author? What did you think of those books?
No, and I think I won't need to.
What did you think of the main character?
Florentino Ariza was a nymphomaniac who justified his use of women as 'being true' to his one true love, Fermina Daza. He treated women as objects and kept a record of his conquests. One of his 'lovers' was fourteen and under his care as her guardian. When Humbert Humbert did that in Lolita he was a pedophile, but Florentino is never judged for it.
Any other particularly interesting characters?
Some of Florentino Ariza's lovers were interesting but they began to run into each other in my mind.
I liked Fermina's cousin, Hildebrande, who had her own love problems and tried to provide opportunities to get Florentina and Fermina together when they were young.
Share a quote from the book:
I seldom notice quotes from a book. Random page opening found this example of the writing:
He had to repress the trembling that was almost as old as he was when he saw the beautiful woman of his dreams on her husband's arm, splendid in her maturity, striding like a queen from another time past the honor guard in parade uniform, under the the shower of paper streamers and flower petals tossed at them from the windows.
Share a favorite scene from the book.
I liked the boat ride near the end of the book for it's discussion about how the environment had been destroyed by the progress of various river enterprises, but this little sermon came out of nowhere and seemed like a big idea to discuss that hadn't been mentioned at all.
What about the ending?
It was okay, but the ending happened at the beginning and then the rest of the book shows how we ended up there. It wasn't my type of love story.
Anything else?The narration was third person omniscient, but a couple of times there was reference to 'us' or 'our' as a citizen of the country, which really threw me. And at another point, the narrator made mention to his/her being a namesake to a character. But there was never anything else mentioned about that. I kept reading partially to find out what that was about and I checked Sparknotes for some reference, but there was nothing there either. Very weird.
Which of your readers are most likely to enjoy this book? Why?
People who like Oprah recommended books. Readers who enjoy Nobel winning author books. Fans of Latin America writing.
Other reviews around the book blogosphere:
Rhinoa,
bybee,
chris at book-a-rama,
susan b evans at
well-mannered frivolity,
December Heat by Luiz Alfredo Garcia- Roza, 273 pages
