Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

Atmospheric, beautiful, and strange. ( )

An incredible read. Touching on true love as a sickness, an Illness which plagues you for life, life itself, aging, dying, secrets taken to the grave. I am not sure why this sat on my bookshelf for close to 10 years waiting to be read. ( )

Just a creepy book! I know that the Oprah Winfrey book club billed it as a romance; I find it anything but. I would label it as obsession. The protagonist of the story uses his obsession for Fermina as an excuse to womanize and he keeps records. (622 women to be exact) The last girl was a 14 year-old and she committed suicide when he broke it off with her. To me, this was just a very bleak book. I listened to it on audio. 348 pages ( )

Gabriel South American background paints the lives in this love story with the social mores of the day. His poetic words wrap around you so you want to read through the night. ( )

3.5-4 stars out of 5.

Let me get one thing out of the way first. Nothing Marquez wrote can be mentioned in the same breath as his masterful "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Now that that bit is clear, let me just quickly write down my worthless thoughts.

This was beautiful. Just beautiful.

Marquez has to be one of my favorite writers. His storytelling is fluent, masterful, elegant, and just perfect and he Latin American backdrop of his stories makes it even more engrossing. What I love most about Marquez, however, is his undeniable grasp on the human character. He grapples with solitude, nostalgia, life and death, aging, love, and time. Given that these topics take up the majority of my thinking in life, I couldn't ask for better company than Marquez himself.

His fresh take on these seemingly inexplicable subjects shines in simple, yet profound, sentences that make the daunting seem obvious. His graceful prose is deep, poetic, wise, simple, charming, clear, and evocative. I took away quite a few quotes from this work that touched me in one way or another. I am still astonished by how wise Marqeuz was, and how vast a knowledge he must have had of life and the human self.

I can relate in quite a few ways to the characters in this book. While I don't think the story itself is that interesting, the way it was told combined with the charming prose edged me slightly towards a higher rating. Simply put, I enjoyed this book because it was a Marquez novel. Not as good as "One Hundred Years of Solitude" but still damn good. ( )