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Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel García Márquez

Start date: January 1, 2015

Finish date: January 31, 2015

Why we're reading this: New School Classics Group Read, January 2015
[close] New School Classics Group Read, January 2015

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Sep 01, 2012 Dr. Vipin Behari Goyal rated it it was amazing

Magical realism of Gracia in creating extra ordinary in the ordinary is mesmerizing.

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Nov 10, 2010 RedSycamore rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1001-books, read-in-2010

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. After a few days, I still can't decide what I think about this book. The prose was absolutely gorgeous, but I kept expecting some sort of hint that Florentino's 'love' for Fermina and its affect on the way he relates to every other woman in his life was meant to serve as a counterpoint to basically every other relationship between any other characters in the novel.

Even his "I've remained a virgin for you" line just seemed to point an accusing finger back at the previous ~50 years of Florentino's After a few days, I still can't decide what I think about this book. The prose was absolutely gorgeous, but I kept expecting some sort of hint that Florentino's 'love' for Fermina and its affect on the way he relates to every other woman in his life was meant to serve as a counterpoint to basically every other relationship between any other characters in the novel.

Even his "I've remained a virgin for you" line just seemed to point an accusing finger back at the previous ~50 years of Florentino's life as if to say that by holding himself back for something that had never existed, he negated any true love he could have experienced with any of the hundreds of women he'd known. He only ever allowed himself a legitimate relationship with Fermina, and that he only achieved after Juvenal died. In essence, he exchanged a lifetime of potential love of many different kinds for a few months of correspondence, a two week boat trip, and the certainly not particularly long remainder of their lives together.

Florentino spent half a century focusing on the perceived tragedy of being separated from his 'love' and remained completely blind to the true tragedy of how much of his own life he wasted and invalidated by focusing on an obsessive desire for something that never existed in the first place. Again, beautifully written, but for me that just couldn't make up for the book's twisted ideology.

[As for the America incident, it bothered me much more than anything else Florentino did - his lack of awareness of what he was doing to himself by not moving on from his obsession with Fermina was tragic, but the way he treated America was despicable. I can see Marquez intending her age to be morally 'borderline' considering the time and place. What I can't overlook is the fact that Florentino took someone who's welfare he was supposed to be actively protecting and remorselessly drove them to suicide; and with her (as with every other woman in his life up to that point) he never even committed himself to the relationship because he was too busy allowing himself to be engrossed in his non-relationship 'with Fermina'). For me, America's death was the last nail in the coffin for Florentino's character. Afterwards, I couldn't even be happy or relieved that he'd finally developed an authentic devotion to Fermina.] ...more

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