I didn't hate it, but I didn't really like it either

books:


	• Love in the Time of Cholera (Vintage International) Gabriel Garcia Marquez Vintage Books, 2007 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 448 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Not a love story

My book club selected this book thinking it was a love story and thinking that it would be a good read since it was made into a movie, but we were wrong on both assertions. I think I may have been the only one to finish it. Just as The Great Gatsby and just as Romeo and Juliet are not love stories, if you look closely beneath the prose and under what Marquez writes about Florentino, the crazed lover, you will find that this is not a love story either, but a question of the importance of stability in life. I'm not sure if this was what Marquez was getting at but who we side with, may tell us a lot about us but it will not make us swoon and wish we had a lover as crazy as Fermina Daza's.

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Brilliant, but did not totally grab my heart

This novel is great and it deserves 10 stars for artistry. That said, I would not be honest if I did not tell you that it did not ultimately grab my heart. I greatly appreciate it; I just don't love it. Hence the 4-star rating.

Why it is great art: Garcia Marquez asks the biggest question of all: how do mere mortals push back against the marauding forces of disease, war and relentless aging that lay siege on the human condition? How, especially does love survive? Accordingly, he explores every corner of love between men and women, especially as it plays out in the seismic shift between the Victorian Age and the coming of modernity in the early 20th century in an unnamed country that strongly resembles the author's Colombian homeland. Garcia Marquez starts off with a teaser: a grandmaster of chess, an unmarried man named Jeremiah de Saint-Amour has committed suicide rather than age without grace and his friend, Dr. Urbino, who is trying to soften the official word so Jeremiah will receive a burial within the church, observes how wasteful suicide is if not committed over love. But this story is not about Jeremiah or chess. It follows Dr. Urbino home where it introduces his five decades long marriage to Fermina Daza and how in just an instant, when he is chasing a pet up a tree and falls, death undoes it, leaving behind a grieving widow. And then it is about one more thing introduced in the first act: at Dr. Urbino's funeral, another man, Florentino Ariza, declares his lifelong love to Fermina, whom he had courted as an adolescent. Acts 2 - 5 go back more than 50 years, then move forward, exploring the naive romance of teenagers, their parting and the Urbino marriage. Garcia Marquez charts their hearts and loves in high detail, realistic even in his depiction of the romantic Florentino who refuses to change even as the world changes around him. In the sixth and last act, the story picks up again at the funeral and watches, after all this time, if Florentino's ardor can play out. The entwined stories reflect an age, a culture, an entire world, a complete species.

Why it did not grab my heart: I'm not sure. It is half as long as Moby Dick, yet seems twice as long. I felt like the author slapped weights on my brain, preventing me from moving through it at a more comfortable speed. I felt that I was in a dark paneled museum looking at large baroque paintings forever. I felt I was being forced to eat too much rich food at an elegant banquet . . . . you get the picture. Ultimately, the chief characters did not need me to love them and while I hugely appreciated them and how they are developed, I easily handed them off when the last page finally turned over.

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Review of Love in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera is an emotional story of love and its hardships. Throughout the novel love is compared to things such as flowers, water, and birds. In this story, the emotion of love is so great, that it literally makes men sick.
Dr. Urbino is a very sophisticated, well-respected doctor. He is not a very emotional man. The story begins with him finding his best friend lying on the floor, after committing suicide. He is afraid of aging, so he killed himself. He usually does not feel pain for his patients, but his old chess partner was very close to him. He finds an eleven-page suicide note in which he explains that he has had an affair with a woman for about half of his life. Dr. Urbino is mad that his friend does not tell him about his lover. He has an intense desire to tell his wife, Fermina, about the letter, but he does not.
This story switches tenses often. The story now goes back to before Dr. Urbino is married.
Fermina Daza is a young women living in a Caribbean Port. She lives with her domineering father and her aunt. Her aunt acts as a motherly figure since Fermina's mother passed away when she was young. Fermina and her aunt like to go on walks together. Florentino Ariza is assigned to deliver a telegram to Fermina's house. This is where he first sees her. He falls in love with her. Fermina studies at the Academy of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin. Florentino has no opportunity to talk to Fermina, because her aunt is always with her on her walks to and from school. Florentino decides to sit on a bench and pretend to read the newspaper so that he can look at her every day. Her aunt is aware of what he is doing but does not tell Fermina. When she notices him, her aunt says that he is probably doing it because he is in love with her. Her aunt assures her that one day, he will write her a lovely letter confessing his love for her. Fermina wants this letter to be delivered. Florentino practically stalks Fermina for he is so in love with her. One day when Fermina's aunt leaves her by herself, he approaches her. He asks her to accept his letter, but he says he cannot without her father's permission. She tells him to return every afternoon and wait to approach her until she changes her seat. When she does, he gives her the letter and they continue to exchange letters of love for quite some time, until Mother Superior catches her writing a love note. She tells Fermina's father and she is sent out of the country to forget about her lover. However, they keep in touch while she is gone. When her father feels she has forgotten her lover, he brings her home. When Florentino sees her for the first time he does not recognize her. She is much more mature looking. Fermina's father has Dr. Urbino come to their house because he thinks that Fermina has cholera. Dr. Urbino falls in love with Fermina. Her father continues to set up dates and eventually they marry. They do not truly love each other when they marry, but believe that they will grow to love each other. On their honeymoon, Fermina is terrified of losing her virginity. The first night on the ship, she suffers seasickness. Urbino comforts her, and eventually convinces her to have sex. After three months, Fermina is pregnant.
While on her honeymoon, Florentino can only think of Fermina. He is sick with love. He drinks cologne and eats flowers so that he can have her scent with him. He is sent out of the country to work for his uncle. On the ship ride there, he is dragged into a room where a girl seduces him and he looses his virginity.
Fermina returns from her honeymoon and her and Urbino's relationship is very strange. Meanwhile, Florentino has turned to sex as a relief from the pain he feels for Fermina. He has 622 affairs, but still feels he is a virgin because he cannot love anyone as much as he loves Fermina. He longs to be with her, but he cannot because of her husband. He is the only thing in his way of Fermina. He is not a violent person, so he is going to wait until he dies to confess his feelings to Fermina again.
When Urbino finally dies, Florentino goes to the wake. He has waited fifty-one years, nine months, and four days for this opportunity to confess his love for Fermina once more. If you would like to know what happens to Fermina and Florentino's relationship you will have to read the book and find out!
I enjoyed this book. It was a bit difficult to read and understand, so I would recommend it to an older audience. There is a lot of switching back and forth between the past and present. Also, there are many references to sex and prostitutes. This novel depicts love in many different ways. It can be a great thing that makes one happy, or it can be an illness that literally drives one mad. Love also gives one's life meaning. I really enjoyed this novel.

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I didn't hate it, but I didn't really like it either

Florentino Ariza's life changed the first time he laid eyes on the beautiful Fermina Daza. Their relationship began when they were both young and her just a school girl. But it lasted for many many years - in ways neither could have expected. At first their courtship was a secret one, through letters, while Fermina tried to determine how she would convince her father to let them marry. But her father had bigger plans for her. He wanted her to marry up in social class, not below, so he forbade the relationship and took her away for a long journey in an effort to get her to forget Florentino. But her father needn't have worry, because once she arrived back in town and saw Florentino, she, herself, was no longer interested and broke the relationship off abruptly.

Florentino was not one for rejection because he spends the next 50 years of his life pining for Fermina and finding ways to simply catch a glimpse of her. She goes on in life, marries an influential doctor, has children, but her marriage is not without it's own problems. Yet, she loves her husband in his own way. Still Florentino will not be dissuaded and he continues to wait hoping to someday have an opportunity to reclaim the love that he believes is his.

This novel of romance takes place in the Carribean at the turn of the century. It is a coming of age novel as much as it is one of love, historical fiction, and medicine. It is a particularly dense book - each word seems to have been specifically chosen and so it is not a novel that can be skimmed quickly - nor should it. The downfall will be if the story does not speak to the reader. This will be very individual. I, for one, was not grabbed by the story and so I found the read to be slow and at times tedious. For others that can be swept up by the romance and characters it will be a wonderful read. There is no fault to be found with the writing or translation, but this book is a great example of one that rises or falls with very personal preference.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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