carly's library card's Reviews > Love in the Time of Cholera

★★★★★
Like cholera (or coronavirus), Márquez has shown us that lovesickness is a plague of its own. Though I preferred One Hundred Years of Soluitude, Love in the Time of Cholera is a superbly powerful love story. A copy of the book was given to me years ago and the recommendation to finally read it couldn't have come at a more opportune time. It has helped to beguile some of the time I'm stuck indoors and I'm pleased to have spent part of it in Márquez's world of longing and magic.

There is so much to be said for this classic. For now, a few of my favorite passages:

“He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”

“She was a ghost in a strange house that overnight had become immense and solitary and through which she wandered without purpose, asking herself in anguish which of them was deader: the man who had died or the woman he had left behind.”

“She would defend herself, saying that love, no matter what else it might be, was a natural talent. She would say: You are either born knowing how, or you never know.”

“Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability.”