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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The thing about Love in the Time of Cholera is that it’s not actually a book about love. It’s a book about the gauzy mist of nostalgia, the ignorant romance of youth, and the stubborn reactionary reflex of age. It’s a book about the awful things we do in the name of love and the even worse things we do in the name of so-called “love”.
It’s a book where the most florid passages are often the most disconcerting, most terrifying, most harrowing, and often the most quickly glossed over with another layer of purple glaze that distracts the reader from the nastier details of our protagonists’ messy lives, just as our protagonists distract themselves from those same paralyzing memories, terrifying moments, unforgivable transgressions.
If you read this book and think that it condones the rape, pedophilia, racism, misogyny, violence, infidelity, and general immorality of Florentino Ariza or Fermina Daza or Juvenal Urbino, you just lack media literacy. Reading this book and coming away with those conclusions is no different from watching a Martin Scorsese movie and thinking that the point of it is that organized crime is good, violence is great, greed is awesome, etc.
García Márquez’s prose is enrapturing, warm, and florid like a gilded tapestry from centuries gone by or a hand-stitched chaise longue set in sun-splashed Caribbean patio, decorated with a frame of glistening monstera leaves. His mastery of long time and short time narration, the way he glides between scene and summary, his epigraphic story set-ups that he does before rewinding and providing context… all make your mind feel like putty in his hands.
He is a master and watching him work at this story is genuinely stupefying. We watch him kneading the dough of these characters’ lives, paying close attention to any bubbles, adding flour and water as needed — no measurements; all feeling, all emotion — smoothing the blanket of bread out and pulling it back together and then letting it all just rise in the oven in the novel’s final third, effortlessly allow all his hard work to pay off.
He’s a genius. This is one of the big ones.
It’s a book where the most florid passages are often the most disconcerting, most terrifying, most harrowing, and often the most quickly glossed over with another layer of purple glaze that distracts the reader from the nastier details of our protagonists’ messy lives, just as our protagonists distract themselves from those same paralyzing memories, terrifying moments, unforgivable transgressions.
If you read this book and think that it condones the rape, pedophilia, racism, misogyny, violence, infidelity, and general immorality of Florentino Ariza or Fermina Daza or Juvenal Urbino, you just lack media literacy. Reading this book and coming away with those conclusions is no different from watching a Martin Scorsese movie and thinking that the point of it is that organized crime is good, violence is great, greed is awesome, etc.
García Márquez’s prose is enrapturing, warm, and florid like a gilded tapestry from centuries gone by or a hand-stitched chaise longue set in sun-splashed Caribbean patio, decorated with a frame of glistening monstera leaves. His mastery of long time and short time narration, the way he glides between scene and summary, his epigraphic story set-ups that he does before rewinding and providing context… all make your mind feel like putty in his hands.
He is a master and watching him work at this story is genuinely stupefying. We watch him kneading the dough of these characters’ lives, paying close attention to any bubbles, adding flour and water as needed — no measurements; all feeling, all emotion — smoothing the blanket of bread out and pulling it back together and then letting it all just rise in the oven in the novel’s final third, effortlessly allow all his hard work to pay off.
He’s a genius. This is one of the big ones.
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
¿Lucharías por obtener lo que más deseas aunque haya pasado más de medio siglo? Si realmente es lo que más deseas, si. Pero...¿te sabrá igual la victoria?
Esta es la idea que explora García Márquez en esta historia, una obsesión disfrazada de amor que duró toda una vida. Los protagonistas se vieron obligados a permanecer alejados por decisiones ajenas a ellos, y a pesar de no haber tenido vidas infelices se sintieron incompletos el uno sin el otro. Florentino fue un hombre que le entregó su cuerpo a muchas, pero su alma a una sola, y padeció en carne propia los síntomas del amor, que a la sazón vienen a ser muy parecidos a los del cólera.
Los personajes son un poco detestables, conformistas hasta cierto punto, como lo dictaban las leyes del momento que les tocó vivir, no puedo decir que me haya gustado especialmente ninguno. La ambientación nos muestra una Colombia ensombrecida por el cólera, donde víctimas del desconocimiento muchas personas padecieron y perdieron la vida o a sus seres queridos.
Me gustó mucho la importancia que tienen las cartas en la trama, como medio de comunicación que nunca pasó de moda entre nuestros desdichados amantes, y conectó su adolescencia con la adultez. El autor nos muestra varias formas de amor que no suelen aparecer en otros libros: un amor por costumbre, un amor después de haber perdido el atractivo, pero tan magnético como el amor juvenil.
La falta de certeza de Fermina de haber amado es algo que la persigue a lo largo de su vida, y por eso se permite pensar que a pesar de haber tenido un matrimonio feliz, no fue una persona plena. Supongo que el corazón quiere lo que quiere.
Quizás otra persona que haya pasado por una experiencia similar sienta con más peso esta historia, yo, sin embargo, me siento una mera espectadora y aunque aprecio la calidad del libro no lo considero entre mis favoritos del autor.
Esta es la idea que explora García Márquez en esta historia, una obsesión disfrazada de amor que duró toda una vida. Los protagonistas se vieron obligados a permanecer alejados por decisiones ajenas a ellos, y a pesar de no haber tenido vidas infelices se sintieron incompletos el uno sin el otro. Florentino fue un hombre que le entregó su cuerpo a muchas, pero su alma a una sola, y padeció en carne propia los síntomas del amor, que a la sazón vienen a ser muy parecidos a los del cólera.
Los personajes son un poco detestables, conformistas hasta cierto punto, como lo dictaban las leyes del momento que les tocó vivir, no puedo decir que me haya gustado especialmente ninguno. La ambientación nos muestra una Colombia ensombrecida por el cólera, donde víctimas del desconocimiento muchas personas padecieron y perdieron la vida o a sus seres queridos.
Me gustó mucho la importancia que tienen las cartas en la trama, como medio de comunicación que nunca pasó de moda entre nuestros desdichados amantes, y conectó su adolescencia con la adultez. El autor nos muestra varias formas de amor que no suelen aparecer en otros libros: un amor por costumbre, un amor después de haber perdido el atractivo, pero tan magnético como el amor juvenil.
La falta de certeza de Fermina de haber amado es algo que la persigue a lo largo de su vida, y por eso se permite pensar que a pesar de haber tenido un matrimonio feliz, no fue una persona plena. Supongo que el corazón quiere lo que quiere.
Quizás otra persona que haya pasado por una experiencia similar sienta con más peso esta historia, yo, sin embargo, me siento una mera espectadora y aunque aprecio la calidad del libro no lo considero entre mis favoritos del autor.
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i’m honestly shocked at how much i didn’t care for this book lol. it didn’t really grip me and i kept hoping it was going to grow on me but then i was ~20 pages from the end and disliking the characters more than ever. florentino ariza, who most of the book centers around, is an insufferable incel type (at first) who then becomes a sleazy womanizer. at no point did i empathize with his fruitless quest of pining his entire life over a woman who rejected him when they were teenagers. i also just didn’t really care for the format of following these characters for their entire (largely uninteresting) lives. i guess i understand the merit of exploring the mundanities of a lifespan, and the indecencies of old age, but this particular narrative failed to make me care about these things. also i know it was a “different time” or whatever so i guess kudos to márquez for characterizing fermina daza as SO stubborn, indignant, and cold as opposed to submissive, but that makes it so hard to believe she would suddenly turn on a dime in her opinion of florentino ESPECIALLY after he interrupts her grieving to make his plea for her love all these decades later??? sorry i know the idea is that they changed so much over their lives that they could meet anew as lovers without the baggage of the past but it just doesn’t feel believable when 90% of the book is spent building up fermina’s indifference to/distaste for florentino. and speaking of florentino. the last 50 pages or so of the book contain a disgusting side plot of him grooming and sexually abusing a FOURTEEN YEAR OLD CHILD when her parents entrust her to his care. at this point he’s at least in his 70s. again, very difficult to believe this teenage girl is enchanted by this decrepit man whose defining feature at this age is how often he uses enemas. which reminds me there is also a scene in which he so graphically shits himself while attempting to win back fermina daza that i thought i was being trolled. overall nothing kept me going but thinking there would be some sort of redemption arc or interesting resolution that never came.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Pedophilia, Rape
Moderate: Sexual content, Excrement, Pandemic/Epidemic
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3.5 stars.
I loved the writing because it was absolutely beautiful (something I've been saying a lot recently), I loved Fermina Daza, and I thoroughly enjoyed the premise.
We begin the story with Dr. Juvenal Urbino who is visiting a patient that has just died. The exposition completely skews our image of what the story will be and within the first fifteen-twenty pages we find out that Urbino isn't the main character at all-- the story will be following a hopeless romantic named Florentino Ariza who wants Urbino dead for marrying the woman of his dreams (Fermina Daza).
Love in the Time of Cholera is told through a poetic humor that completely takes over your heart. Marquez is raw in his tellings of sickness and sex and the realities of growing old. His writing will truly encapsulate you. However, one of the main issues I had with it was that it feels dense. I could be reading for half an hour and get through a good fifteen pages (maybe). I also wasn't very connected to the characters, but by the end, I could really feel for Florentino which could be because of how dense and detailed the writing is, so it works for better and for worse in this case. I knew his every thought, every step, every voyage he decided to go on. And that's wonderful to some extent.
Another thing I noticed was that because Marquez really goes on and on, if you missed what character he was talking about at the beginning of a paragraph (in both the audiobook and physical) you probably won't figure it out again until a page or two later (sure, I could've just gone back, but that wasn't possible for me when listening to it so I was scrambling my mind thinking he was talking about one person and realize later it wasn't them.)
Also just a heads up, there is an underage relationship that occurs towards the very end of the book, I was pretty shocked by it honestly, but it isn't unbearable. Also, maybe this isn't the right book, but... where was the magical realism? Did I just miss that, or?
Bottom line: I definitely recommend it if you're an established adult living your life and want a nice, realistic romance
I loved the writing because it was absolutely beautiful (something I've been saying a lot recently), I loved Fermina Daza, and I thoroughly enjoyed the premise.
We begin the story with Dr. Juvenal Urbino who is visiting a patient that has just died. The exposition completely skews our image of what the story will be and within the first fifteen-twenty pages we find out that Urbino isn't the main character at all-- the story will be following a hopeless romantic named Florentino Ariza who wants Urbino dead for marrying the woman of his dreams (Fermina Daza).
Love in the Time of Cholera is told through a poetic humor that completely takes over your heart. Marquez is raw in his tellings of sickness and sex and the realities of growing old. His writing will truly encapsulate you. However, one of the main issues I had with it was that it feels dense. I could be reading for half an hour and get through a good fifteen pages (maybe). I also wasn't very connected to the characters, but by the end, I could really feel for Florentino which could be because of how dense and detailed the writing is, so it works for better and for worse in this case. I knew his every thought, every step, every voyage he decided to go on. And that's wonderful to some extent.
Another thing I noticed was that because Marquez really goes on and on, if you missed what character he was talking about at the beginning of a paragraph (in both the audiobook and physical) you probably won't figure it out again until a page or two later (sure, I could've just gone back, but that wasn't possible for me when listening to it so I was scrambling my mind thinking he was talking about one person and realize later it wasn't them.)
Also just a heads up, there is an underage relationship that occurs towards the very end of the book, I was pretty shocked by it honestly, but it isn't unbearable. Also, maybe this isn't the right book, but... where was the magical realism? Did I just miss that, or?
Bottom line: I definitely recommend it if you're an established adult living your life and want a nice, realistic romance
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Beautifully written account of 50+ years of carrying a torch for your first love. Idealistic, romantic, a bit savage - a deep examination of all aspects of physical and spiritual love over a lifetime. Meandering though…certainly not a quick read. One to be savored.