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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
I don't know how else to describe how evocative this book is without saying how much it reeks. It smells like flowers, perfumed paper, asparagus piss, cotton dresses, anisette, almonds, sex, sweat, shit, and swamp. So much of the story is just the setting: the colonial city, bloated and decaying, the river where manatees swim with corpses, the sea with its false treasures. Beauty and ugliness, life and death sleep side by side here and García Márquez captures it in rich detail. The characters themselves are all fascinating and full of contradictions. Florentino Ariza is passion and sickness incarnate, so full of it that he could keel over and die at any moment, but he clings onto his youth the longest. Juvenal Urbino is a man of society, hellbent on eradicating cholera and cleansing the city, yet he too eventually succumbs to the fits and throes of passion, to the detriment of his wife. And Fermina Daza, trapped between these two extremes, never fully quite getting a foothold on her own happiness until she's almost ready to die. It's all sad as hell, especially when you think of the collateral damage left in the wake of this "love story." But García Márquez has a very tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that made me laugh even with so many terrible things going on, like he's jerking his thumb back at his own characters saying "Get a load of these motherfuckers." What an emotional and visual literary roller coaster.
i did not resonate with this book whatsoever. still, márquez’s prose is quite nice and there were many beautiful (but also many questionable) lines about love and age. i hope i never cross paths with a man like florentino ariza…
I absolutely adored it! Marques is a true artist. It's amazing how he captures all the feelings and how he succeeds in representing the raw reality entangled within a surreal world. I must cite just a couple of sentences where he describes with an impressive accuracy the feelings of a man coming back to his native country after a longer residence abroad: (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. But when he stood at the railing of the ship and saw the white promontory of the colonial district again, the motionless buzzards on the roofs... only then did he understand to what extent he had been an easy victim to the charitable deceptions of nostalgia. ... Little by little he grew accustomed to the sultry heat of October, to the excessive odors... and at last he gave in to the spell of habit. It did not take him long to invent an easy justification for his surrender. This was his world, he said to himself, the sad, oppressive world that God had provided for him, and he was responsible to it.
حتى الان لم استطع ان افهم لماذا أنهيت هذه الرواية بعدة أسابيع وليست بعدة أيام, هل كان السبب عدم قرأتي للكتب في اللغة العربيه وتفضيلي للروايات في اللغه الانجليزية, أم لأنني لم أرد ان انهي قراءة هذه الرواية.
انها رواية حب غريبة ومثيره للدهشه, بعد محاولة اولى وثانيه وبعد سنة وسنتين... ثلاث وخمسين سنة وستة شهور وأحد عشر ليلة حتى كانا سوية. تتعدد الشخصيات في الرواية لكن محورها حول ثلاثة شخصيات وكل ما دار في حياتهم منذ ان كانوا شبابا حتى الشيخوخة, وهم الدكتور خوفينال اوربينو, فيرمينا داثا وفلورينتينو اريثا.
SPOILER ALERT**وفي نهاية الحب في زمن الكوليرا, بعد الحب الأول ومحاولة النسيان ومن ثم القفز من علاقة الى أخرى ومن مرأة لأخرى وكثرة العلاقات العابره استطاع فلورينتينو اريثا الحصول على الأحب على قلبة في نهاية الأمر.
انها رواية حب غريبة ومثيره للدهشه, بعد محاولة اولى وثانيه وبعد سنة وسنتين... ثلاث وخمسين سنة وستة شهور وأحد عشر ليلة حتى كانا سوية. تتعدد الشخصيات في الرواية لكن محورها حول ثلاثة شخصيات وكل ما دار في حياتهم منذ ان كانوا شبابا حتى الشيخوخة, وهم الدكتور خوفينال اوربينو, فيرمينا داثا وفلورينتينو اريثا.
SPOILER ALERT**وفي نهاية الحب في زمن الكوليرا, بعد الحب الأول ومحاولة النسيان ومن ثم القفز من علاقة الى أخرى ومن مرأة لأخرى وكثرة العلاقات العابره استطاع فلورينتينو اريثا الحصول على الأحب على قلبة في نهاية الأمر.
adventurous
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I remember the first time I picked up this book. I didn't make it all the way through that time. I think it took me until the third try, and then I fell in love with it. I was 22. I thought it was incredibly romantic.
I just reread the book, inspired by the death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez to pick it up again. It was as beautifully written as I remembered, as lush and descriptive and lyrical. But... I'm 24 years older than the first time I read it, and quite a bit further down the road in terms of my feminism. The first time I read the book, I thought it was a love story between two people. Now I see it as very much the story of Florentino Ariza, as he tries to possess a series of women for a variety of reasons.
That's not to say that this isn't a beautiful piece of literature, worthy of enjoying. Only to say that it is not, to me, the same book I fell in love with when I was 22.
I just reread the book, inspired by the death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez to pick it up again. It was as beautifully written as I remembered, as lush and descriptive and lyrical. But... I'm 24 years older than the first time I read it, and quite a bit further down the road in terms of my feminism. The first time I read the book, I thought it was a love story between two people. Now I see it as very much the story of Florentino Ariza, as he tries to possess a series of women for a variety of reasons.
Spoiler
When I reached the subplot about America Vicuna, I was horrified -- and surprised that this plot point hadn't made a bigger impression on my in my youth.That's not to say that this isn't a beautiful piece of literature, worthy of enjoying. Only to say that it is not, to me, the same book I fell in love with when I was 22.
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
im so amazed by the last half of this book ive been waiting for literature to grasp me lately been in a slump and this was it. Gonna ruminate and come back with my thoughts. Ok obviously this book leaves an amazing but also horrible taste in my mouth because why is the main character literally Bojack horeseman… but the end really transformed the display of love in old age ugh it was beautiful. And the whole experience of reading it was transformative