Love in the Time of Cholera in Reading 1001

Jun 15, 2018 Kristel rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-books, magical-realism, 1001-challenge, aging, latin-american-literature

This one by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is by far my favorite. I've put it off so long as I find him hard to read but this one was great. Love the use of symbolism and even though most consider this a love story/romance, I loved it because it was about aging and how love changes as we age. A story of two young people who fall in love in the youth but do not marry each other. Instead Fermina marries a doctor with good social standing. Florentino, the boy, is a womanizer and a romantic. He rises in his ...more

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Jun 05, 2007 Jessica Haider rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, fiction, latinx, bipoc-author, magical_realism, slipstream, 1001-books, obsession

A stunningly beautiful novel with one of my favorite first sentences ever. At its core, "Love in the Time of Cholera" is about one thing: love.

I've been warned away from the recently released film version though. Its a shame when they go and ruin wonderful books when they translate them to film. tsk tsk. ...more

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Dec 08, 2010 Chinook rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001, drunk-book-club

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

"...his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth do them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves."

Dr. Urbino would say: "The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning bef ...more

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Sep 19, 2011 Anita Pomerantz rated it did not like it

Shelves: 1001-books

Can't say I was too delighted in this story of unrequited love. The author has some great insights into the topics of marital love, and love at various life stages, and the relationship of sex to love. But his female protagonist is so awful it's pretty hard to fathom why the male protagonist holds a torch for her for so long. And the pace is sooooo slow. If you like a lot of descriptive detail in your stories, Love in the Time of Cholera may be your cup of tea. It definitely was not mine. ...more

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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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