Love in the Time of Cholera in Read the Movie

Aug 17, 2012 Penney rated it really liked it

Shelves: bbc-book-list, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die

I approached this book with its title and author being familiar on my literary landscape for so long. Post-university, when I'd just moved to autumnal Sydney, one of my backpacking English roommates urged me to read One Hundred Years of Solitude and said it was 'just so good'. I tried - I really tried. But I just could not keep up the momentum through such a pondering, lyrical pace.

Love in the Time of Cholera has the same style and pace I remember of One Hundred Years of Solitude but this tim I approached this book with its title and author being familiar on my literary landscape for so long. Post-university, when I'd just moved to autumnal Sydney, one of my backpacking English roommates urged me to read One Hundred Years of Solitude and said it was 'just so good'. I tried - I really tried. But I just could not keep up the momentum through such a pondering, lyrical pace.

Love in the Time of Cholera has the same style and pace I remember of One Hundred Years of Solitude but this time I made it through. It is beautiful, thoughtful writing.

For me, rather than its 'love story' elements, it resonated more as a story of how we all fall to the inevitability of aging and how we assume many roles through our lives. From beautiful, alluring, young maiden - to strong, assured mother, serving wife and comandress of a home - to a woman who sees life with the perception of having lived it and is caught in the final treachery of her aging body and the world's judgements of her as an 'old woman'.

"Then he reached out with two icy fingers in the darkness, felt for the other hand in the darkness, and found it waiting for him. Both were lucid enough to realize, at that same fleeting instant, the the hands made of old bones were not the hands they imagined before touching. In the next moment, however, they were."

Although the story was nominally about Fermina and Florentino, I related more strongly to the relationship between, Fermina and her husband, Juvenal Urbino. García's writing on the expectations they brought to their marriage, their young times in Paris, their glamorous public image and their tribulations of loving and, yet, learning to put up with each other, rang true to me.

"In the end they knew each other so well that by the time they had been married thirty years they were like a single divided being... Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy."

I have to reflect longer on the 'true romance' of Fermina and Florentino. Were they the ones for each other? Would Fermina have been more truly happy if she had chosen Florentino over Juvenal? Was that initial romance the the real thing or just a teenage infatuation? And could I really like Florentino (view spoiler)? ...more

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Feb 18, 2013 Audrey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: ι_book-club-west-nashville

It felt slow and meandering at first, and was not at all what I expected, but in a good way. The story acoided every trite and cliche plot device without seeming to try too hard. The characters were not altogether lovable or despisable, which made them real. In the end what I thought was going to be a love story was more of a story about the different ways to love, love throughout time and the many stages of life. Almost more of a meditation of love told through a narrative device. It will certa ...more

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