Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

I really tried to like it. I got the themes but there were aspects of the writing and story that bothered me. I did enjoy parts of it. ( )

I worked SO hard to get through just the first chapter of this book, and after that I had to set it down. I didn't know what the heck was going on, for starters. Maybe it just wasn't the right time or I wasn't paying attention, but I had no clue what was happening. On top of that, there was SO much description, it seemed like I'd never get to the end of just the first chapter, much less the entire book. I didn't finish this one. I've heard a lot of friends rave about it so I may eventually pick it up again - it might be a better time down the road where I might view it differently. But in the meantime, I'm going to leave it on the shelf.

Talvez a minha grande desilusão do ano.

Sendo o Cem anos de solidão o meu livro favorito e, querendo marcar a morte deste grande autor com a leitura de um dos seus livros, este O Amor nos Tempos de Cólera revelou-se uma leitura sofrível, que se arrastou por vários meses, por vezes deixando-me a pensar porque é que continuava a lê-lo.

Não gostar do protagonista é, para mim, meio caminho andado para desistir do mesmo e, Florentino Ariza é, provavelmente, um dos mais errados e desinteressantes heróis românticos que já li. Talvez na cabeça de Márquez, a ideia de um indivíduo feio e mulherengo com alma de poeta e perfil de stalker fosse glamorosa o suficiente para daí escrever um livro em que o amor vence, mesmo quando a mulher passa mais de 50 anos a dizer que não. Na minha cabeça não é não, não é amor.

Além disso, a característica que mais gosto da sua escrita, o realismo mágico, pouco ou nada surgiu. Ficam como pontos positivos a sua escrita maravilhosa e um retrato interessante das caraíbas do virar do século XX. ( )

40. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
translator: Edith Grossman, 1988
published: 1985
format: 348 page trade paperback
acquired: 2008, from a library book sale
read: Jul 6-19
rating: 5

From the perspective of reading through Márquez, this book has me thinking of several things. It's his first book since winning the Noble Prize in 1982, and it's his first book since [The Fragrance of Guava], which gave me insight into his writing style and how much it changed after [One Hundred Years of Solitude], and it's his first regular novel since OHYoS. ([Autumn of the Patriarch] is an oddball book, and not a typical novel). The lesson from [The Fragrance of Guava] is that this is no longer a carefree author willing to writing frivolous stuff at speed and rework later on, but instead a slow and painstakingly careful author turning out a small amount of text a day, but each page ready for publication.

[Love in the Time of Cholera] mixes different aspects of Márquez's writing, notably mixing his more formal style in his first four novels with the more dramatic style he used in OHYoS. It's a seamless mixture by character, and hints at some of what he is doing here.

Ok, this a love story. It's one from yet another perspective, or actually from several - first from childhood and then revisiting the evolution of emotions through the ages of life. Time changes slowly in the place, but characters age, deal with the consequences, and unconsciously recreate themselves without shedding their pasts. Márquez makes this romantic by not neglecting the world that the story takes place in, including all its filth. That's, of course, the main point of the title, cholera being a disease caused by human excrement, and an important reminder of what he's doing. And that world is another love story in the book, one between the author and his nostalgia for early 20th-century Caribbean Columbia (actually, the whole book takes place before he was born, and ends just before he was born.)

But it's a love story, filled with numerous memorable characters, and one one that sweeps away time. The reader is sent drifting through various flows of text that the mind can ride along, and it's never necessary to put your feet down.

I think readers in a place to get swept away, without knowing it of course, are most likely to fall in and really enjoy this novel. And readers who might get quickly bored as the text waxes slowly on, will find themselves turning pages looking for next chapter end. It's ultimately a slow moving book, even if those chapter ends aren't all that far away.

If someone were to ask me where to begin with Márquez, I would want to suggest his novellas, keeping in mind the variety of things that come of them all combined, but I would probably suggest this instead.

I picked this up as my one title written for adults to be read over spring break. I chose Marquez because he was on the shelf & Peach & I were headed to Mexico, so I thought I'd read in the neighborhood.

The language, sentences, & plot are baroque in their elaborate structure, detail, and discursiveness. As I approach the end, always the most difficult part of a novel, I find myself continuing to enjoy this labyrinthine love story & its humid turn-of-the-20th century colonial Caribbean setting. It's like reading an ornate chandelier.


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