“A love story of astonishing power.” – Newsweek The International Bestseller and modern literary classic by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia MarquezIn 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 … 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.
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One of my all time favorites. What wonderful characters, and I do mean characters.
Every year I try to read at least one book that’s considered a literary masterpiece. Anything that ended up as an Oprah’s Book Club pick, as well as a author that won a Nobel Prize, should have been a magical choice. It’s true, there are lots of fascinating things going on in this book, but the story itself is actually kind of messed up.
There are some books that aren’t meant to be taken literally, and this is one of them. Woven through the pages are extensive symbolism and metaphor layered over metaphor which when peeled back and examined are quite insightful. But, I personally struggled to resonate with any of the characters or situations.
The Story
As told by an omniscient narrator in a nonlinear fashion, Love in the Time of Cholera follows the lives of Florentino Ariza and the woman he falls into unbreakable love with, Fermina Daza, and also to some extent, the man Fermina ends up marrying, Dr. Juvenal Urbino.
Throughout the course of the book, we get to see Florentino’s obsession with Fermina and how it plots the course of his life. It determines where he lives, what jobs he takes, and how he interacts with other people. Because he feels fated to not love anyone else, he never enters into relationships with other women for love, but only to satisfy the pleasures of the flesh as he waits for Dr. Urbino to die.
Fifty years and 622 affairs later, the fated day comes when Dr. Urbino does indeed die. Florentino, now an old man, seeks his prize of Fermina’s hand and heart, only for her to brutally reject him. Undeterred, he writes her letter after letter while she’s grieving the loss of her husband. Finally, the two come together and take a journey by boat that they intend to stay on forever.
If you are looking for metaphor, look at the title. Love in the Time of Cholera. While yes, the actual disease of cholera is running amok in the background of the story, often leaving piles of bodies that our main characters witness, the book actually makes the argument that love itself is a disease that people are infected with. At one point it says that the symptoms of unrequited love are the same as cholera. Florentino is one sick, sad man.
My Review
I really do try hard to find things that are either interesting or entertaining in any book I read. Love in the Time of Cholera had plenty of lovely prose and description, layers of depth and symbolism, and a sense of otherworldliness. But, the story itself, being a 60 year failed love story, didn’t scratch any of my literary itches.
The style of writing makes the story itself hard to follow. The chapters and scenes jump around the timeline with no clear reason to the order in which things are told. As I was listening to the book, I might have missed textual clues that might have helped here. As it was, I was never confident what time period the characters were in, and as such, it made it impossible to gain any sense of rising tension or maintain a solid conflict to solve.
And … I continually struggled to remember who was who when it came to the characters of Florentino and Dr. Urbino. They both had a love for Fermina, but they had wildly different attitudes and tastes, so half the time I kept thinking one was the other and being really confused.
My Recommendations
Some people love this book and rate it among their top 10 reads of all time. Many people like me became frustrated with the lack of a clear conflict and storyline. Should you want to try reading it, I recommend not to use the audiobook version if possible, and to also read a brief synopsis beforehand. Trust me, there are no surprises in the book to spoil, so you’ll be able to enjoy the writing more by having a better idea of the structure from the start.
As this is a literary book, and technically magical realism although I fail to really see it, it’s intended for adult readers. There are plenty of adult situations, complex storylines, and frank discussions of casual sex. For all you working toward your degrees in literature, there is plenty to unpack in there so from an academic standpoint, you could do worse.
But, if you are reading to simply enjoy a nice book, I’d go elsewhere.
I rate Love in the Time of Cholera 2/5 stars for failing to have a satisfying conclusion, lacking compelling conflict, and being hard to follow.
I read this book many years ago. I would need to read it again to remember names and details, but I remember loving the book so much. I remember the writing style being in somewhat of a spiral pattern; I don’t know if it was due to the fact that that I was reading an English translation of a book written in the Spanish Language, but I do remember it being a challenge! However I do remember the main characters reuniting in love, and that it was a satisfying ending. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a wonderful author.
Brilliant.
Well, things being what they are in the world, I decided in April the time had come for me to finally read this classic. Loved it! Such an amazing command of language! I loved the narrative elements, especially! We start with the funeral of Dr. Juvenal Urbino, and that was merely setting to get us to our central characters (though he does circle back around to join us many pages later). Fermina Daza was a fantastic character throughout. I loved where her arc went. I will say, I got a little worn out on Florentino Ariza. I never rooted for him (if we were, in fact, supposed to root for him). I might have lost some steam with about eight pages to go, but the ending was great! Saved it for me, for sure! On balance: Highly recommend.
Magic realism at its best!
The time is late 19th -early 20th century, the location is Colombia, likely the city of Cartegena, and the story is a recounting of the lives of three individuals: Florentino Ariza, Fermina Daza, and Dr. Juvenal Urbino. Fermina is very intelligent woman, and early in life, she recognizes her diminished position as a female in a patriarchal society. And yet, she is bedeviled by feeling of guilt whenever she departs from expected conventions. This guilt and indecisiveness will be her ruin. Juvenal Urbino is an upright leader of his community, a European-educated man, sophisticated, and widely respected by all. Despite some shortcomings, he loves Fermina and gives her a good life during their long marriage. However, Florentino Ariza is the primary focus of the narrative.
Florentino and Fermina meet at the age of fifteen and begin a relationship that primarily involves notes, letters and poems. She tires of him quickly, and eventually comes to describe Florentino as a “shadow.” Not Florentino. He waits for more than fifty years to be united with Fermina despite her marriage to Juvenal. This seems to be on the surface a great love story. However, if the reader is paying attention, it becomes clear that Florentino is not in love with Fermina. Rather, he is obsessed by her, and his narcissistic obsession is accompanied by a ruthless willingness to prevail. And he does prevail by the end of the story. He comes into full possession of Fermina, securing her on a riverboat that will apparently never see landfall again.
Readers can easily be drawn into Florentino’s self-serving recounting of himself as a loyal and patient lover and easily believe his story of enduring love. Or they can make note of his brief but revealing asides in which we learn that during the fifty year wait for Fermina, he has had more than six hundred lovers (despite claiming to Fermina that he remained virginal), that he raped and impregnated a servant girl, and he engaged in pedophilia when he drew his 13-year old ward into a sexual relationship. Later, when she commits suicide, he dismisses the suicide as the result of bad scores in school. And after Juvenal dies, Florentino tells us in an aside that he crafted a series of philosophical letters to Fermina, knowing that the letters would sway her in his favor, not that he believed in anything he wrote.
A metaphor in this story is the river that the characters travel on. On early voyages, characters see riverbanks lined with a lush tropical forest. The final voyage at the end of the story describes a deforested and burned wasteland with banks lined with dead bodies, victims of cholera.
Garcia-Marquez weaves a rich and colorful tale that can be best described as an elaborate and very beautiful tapestry. It is also a very dark tale. That he has drawn so many readers into Florentino’s orbit who come accept without question his story of love and loyalty just gives proof of what a brilliant writer Gabriel Garcia-Marquez was.
GGM writes in a sublime way. Holding us to reading from beginning to end. A novel that describes an obsessive but pure love, as patient as it is painful. The characters are fabulous, the descriptions magnificent. Whoever reads a GGM book wants to read all the others.
I started reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, just after the start of the quarantine. I figured it would be appropriate! It is a magnificent novel! Marquez has won the Nobel prize for Literature and is one of the founders and brilliant lights of the school of “Magic” or “Gothic” Realism that flourished in South America in the mid-to-late 20th century. It is typified by a lush and gorgeously descriptive prose with meandering,nonlinear plots and great character studies and attention to detail. It is a “magical” style, I think, because it acknowledges and even revels in the impossibility of rationally accounting for existence and the fact that no matter how hard we try to organize, explain, rationalize and control our lives and nature, nature and the unexpected and unexplainable always have a way of breaking through in gloriously fantastical and marvelous ways. Though some might say it is a frustrating read because of its seemingly aimless and meandering plots (actually comprised of a jumble of a myriad of interwoven stories), to me, It is a delight to read! I highly recommend it.
I loved it!
Seems appropriate these days
Magical Realism at its finest.
Plodding character development. Uninteresting protagonists.
I read this book slowly, savoring every page.
One of my favourites. When Florentino Ariza falls for Fermina Diaz, it starts a love affair that will last over fifty years of watching and waiting and hoping. It is so romantic and so heartfelt, it made me jealous. The ending is one long bliss. Recommended for the enternal romantics among you. I’ve never read another book like it.
A very nice read. Enjoyable.
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An enchanting tale of unending love that makes one want to survive to a very advanced age.
It was mildly interesting, but just one long narrative. I think there were two chapters in the whole book. Hard to find a place to stop.
Wonderful book