Love in the Time of Cholera (Oprah’s Book Club) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Epub)

Description

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs–yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

User’s Reviews

Review “This shining and heartbreaking novel may be one of the greatest love stories ever told.” –The New York Times Book Review“A love story of astonishing power…. Altogether extraordinary.” –Newsweek “Brilliant, provocative…magical…splendid writing.” –Chicago Tribune “Beguiling, masterly storytelling…. García Márquez writes about love as saving grace, the force that makes life worthwhile.” –Newsday “A sumptuous book…[with] major themes of love, death, the torments of memory, the inexorability of old age.” –The Washington Post Book World

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ The writing is nothing short of masterful. My problem is that the protagonist, at least for the majority of the book, is a reprehensible human being. He falls in love at a very young age even though he’s never actually talked to the girl, only exchanging notes, and maintained this obsession for his lifetime. She marries another after firmly rejecting him. It is incomprehensible to me that he sustains this for over 50 years. During that time, even though he is described as somewhat slovenly in his appearance and not attractive, he manages to voraciously bed multiple women, some for one time some as ongoing lovers. He only truly “loves” one person. A girl sent to him for protection who he seduces at the age of fourteen after grooming her for a few years. So we are supposed to be heartened when in his 70’s he finally “gets the girl.” My revulsion at this character was only overcome by the absolutely beautiful writing, the fully realized characters and the description of time and place. Be warned, this is a long and complex book, not an easy read.

⭐ Now, as a grad student, I HATED this book. Not because it wasn’t well written but because I hated the characters and the overall theme. Not sure why everyone loves this one so much. That’s my honest review. Take it how you wish.

⭐ This is a book written in a flowery style with poetic descriptions and almost no dialogue. I give it 3 stars as I do believe it is a hidden masterpiece in its foolery. In my opinion the POV is from a despicably disturbed individual Florentino Ariza. While the prose describing the main protagonist comes off as romantic and pathetic, in reality he is a basically a sociopathic stalker. If you think about his overall character (aside from the fact that this was in a different era), he caused a great deal of pain to many women (and even was the catalyst for the deaths of more than one of them) and he was a letter writer of persuasive prose (glib seduction/grooming) for not only himself, but for others. I equate the title to being the description of his love NOT being love, but a sickness that equates to the then deadly disease cholera. Even Ariza’s mother describes her son as only having suffered one sickness in his life, cholera (he never actually had cholera).Back in that era of arranged marriages and long drawn out courtships based on societal status, romanticism was at a different level and pace, but don’t be fooled by the main character and feel the pity. That is the trick of this book – is understanding that we are hearing the story from the POV of a very sick, obsessed and persuasive narcissist. And Fermina Daza is captured by him in the end. Very poignant the foreshadowing of Dr. Urbino’s dying words “you’ll never know how much I’ve loved you” to Fermina. Because she never will – she is caught up in the sickness of our main protagonist’s “cholera” and her own loneliness. Dr. Urbino, being the champion of curing other’s of the deadly disease of the time, is destined to die never being able to cure the “cholera” that exists in his own marriage. Ariza does not “love” Fermina. He doesn’t even know her. He is in lust with her and it is because he can’t have her. Throughout this story, he has many sexual trysts with others, yet thinks of himself in virginal terms, because he has not conquered the grass that is greenest to him, Fermina. Many readers believe it is truly a book about “love” but it isn’t and that is what could be dangerous. This book treads a fine line and a level of sophistication that may bypass many.

⭐ I almost put this book down and didn’t finish it more than once. But I forged on due to a good friend’s gushing response to it so thought I had to finish it to see what I might miss otherwise. The story was very tedious and too many switch backs in time to confuse. Characters were not worth all the many many pages given them. I didn’t embrace, identify with, or sympathize with any of them. Would NOT recommend this book to anyone I know, including my book group.

⭐ I can see why Gabriel Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize for literature. The book has a very unique style. It is more like painting a picture with words than telling a story in the usual sense. In a painting you can move your focus, look around and see different parts quickly, then maybe study some details. Similarly, the scenes in the book are not in chronological order. In fact, the first scene is actually near the end temporally (so don’t worry that the next paragraph of this review is giving anything away, you will find these things near the beginning of the book). The author gives a glimpse of various points in time, and then fills in details as the book progresses. And, it is more than just a picture of these characters’ lives, it is a picture of a time and a place. At the end of the book, you will feel like you have lived there.For most of the book, I thought it was a tragedy not a love story. I disagree with many reviewers, it was not a book about unrequited love, because Florentino Ariza was never in love. Even though Florentino Ariza was successful in a worldly sense, I felt sorry for him. He never loved Fermina Daza, they were never much more than acquaintances. He wasted his entire life being in love with the idea of being in love, but never understanding what love is. Love is not a disease, it is not infatuation, it is not lust, it is not an extreme form of like. For most of his life, his love was about himself, even when he was proud to be suffering for it. Only at the very end did he realize that love is about the one being loved, it is something you do; love is a verb, not a state of being. Also, only at the end of the book did I really understand the title of the book.

⭐ “The words I am about to express:They now have their own crowned goddess.”–Leandro DiazLove in the Time of Cholera is not a book that can be taken like a shot of tequila—slammed down then sit back and feel the burn. No, no, this book is like a fine aged wine. I swirled it around the glass and drank in the beauty of his prose. The delicious writing slipped through my brain and settled into my core until I was on fire. I had to commit, to give Gabriel García Márquez my undivided attention.Love in the Time of Cholera is about passion. Not just desire in love, but many different kinds of craving. The kind of intensity that consumes the soul in a way that will never let go. Many stories are going on at once in this tale. They all swirl around love and loss, be it a person, money, or a life not fully lived. Márquez spoke of the unfathomable pain that can make people go completely mad when their yearnings are not fulfilled. On the other side of the coin, that kind of hunger can drive a person to succeed beyond anything they had ever imagined.The novel takes place between 1880 and 1930 in an unnamed port city in the Caribbean. A Cholera outbreak devastates the town. Can the new doctor, Juvenal Urbino, who follows in his father’s footsteps, make the changes needed to keep another at bay? We are also introduced to Fermina Daza, and Florentino Ariza who suffer from young love, as well as so many other brilliant characters as the lives in this city unfold in all their magnificent splendor.Márquez uses foreshadowing exquisitely to draw the line of where you might be going but is that truly the destination? If you don’t keep reading, you’ll never know.I can’t bring myself to give away spoilers. The story is too beautiful, too heartbreaking, too everything, not to read. Márquez will seduce you if you allow him, but you must give yourself over to the Latino heat of the sweltering Caribbean. You won’t be sorry.

⭐ The somewhat languid pace of the novel fits with the times, the climate, and the social mores of the setting. It also enables a nuanced exploration of the kinds of love experienced by the main characters in the story. It could be argued that the central theme of the relationship between the two primary characters is somewhat farfetched, but when does love follow a formula (except in rom-coms)? While not a page-turner, the story remains engaging throughout. The author has a lovely way with words (as captured by his English translator) that brings the texture of people, time and place to vivid life. I thought the author let the primary male character off the hook for his poor judgment in the final (of many) love relationships before returning to his lifelong inamorata. But maybe it is also my own biases intruding. All in All, a great read from an author of almost magical word-power.

⭐ This book is about Florentino Ariza, a man who is so creepy and pitiful and self-absorbed who lives his life by sheer force to finally wear down the woman he wishes to dominate like a hunted tiger despite her very real protests, her acknowledgement that their teenage crush on each other was NOT love, and not to mention despite her 50-some-odd years of being committed to marriage!Terrible moral/ethical “lessons” in this book. Should you care for a man who says he’s been a virgin for his love when he’s slept with 622 other women?! I was totally disgusted, but more than that, THE BOOK WAS BORING.Maybe I wasn’t intended to like any of the characters. Maybe the flowery, droning cadence wasn’t simply to draw along the plot. I just wish it had actually captured what cholera looked like in Colombia, instead of wedging in the occasional forced observation of floating bodies in the river.I wanted historical fiction. I think what I read was boring smut.

⭐ The writing evokes a time and place that feel real. The Caribbean at the turn of the century. Everything is brought alive with great detail except the characters who felt elusive and unlikable, especially Florentino who becomes obsessed when he glimpses Fermina when they’re young. They briefly exchange letters and she finally marries another man who she also doesn’t love. Florentino revolves his life around Fermina while he waits for her husband to die for over 50 years believing she is his true love, though it doesn’t stop him from sleeping with pretty much every woman who crosses his path, even his young guardian and assaulting a servant. This is glossed over. He’s described as odd and slovenly, so why so many women fall into bed with him is puzzling. There is little love in this story despite an obsession with it. Spending all this time with reprehensible or unlikable or sad characters is unsatisfying, though I did like the ending. The skillful writing is the best reason to read it.

⭐ I have been hearing about this book most of my life. It seemed like a good book to read during the pandemic lockdown.It wasn’t! This is perhaps one of the top ten worse books I have ever read. None of the characters were like-able. I did not care at all about what did or didn’t happen to them.I guess when it was written, it was quite scandalous, but now it just seems creepy and prevented.The writing style was hard to follow and I had to force myself to read this book. Once I start reading, I usually cannot put a book down. It was a chore to get thru this.

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