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lazycow 's review for:
Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel García Márquez
I have a certain anticipation when I know I'm beginning the work of a Nobel Prize winning author. I'm expecting to be challenged and expecting it to be a slog, but also for the hike to the summit to be a rewarding journey worthy of a healthy yarp from the mountaintop.
I'm having a hard time placing my feelings on Love in the Time of Cholera.
I appreciated much of what this novel has to offer, and I respect GGM for his craft and skill, but I did not enjoy this novel for the most part.
GGM writes beautifully. He writes about beautiful things beautifully, and he writes about ugly, cynical, grotesque, too-human things beautifully to the point I wanted to equate both dichotomies and rail on GGM for loving the ugly, 'immoral' parts of life. But he also writes soooo densely. I began to skim whole passages because they are so mired in details (and I don't think I missed out on much) but he would have passages of details with important plot points dotted within them. It was not something I enjoyed.
The immoral and the ugly, I certainly struggled with. But I have to think back to this excellent question about morality, "The universe is moral, but it shares YOUR view of morality?"
And with that in mind, I think I can digest Love in the Time of Cholera.
It's a love story but not of the romantic storybook kind. This is about love in all its guises and all its false and real forms.
I certainly felt for Florentino and even identified with him in the beginning while also understanding Fermina's capriciousness. But by the end of the novel I realized I did not like him or his obsessive love that I felt was not love but madness. (Love is madness, I believe is another quote well worn quote). Nor did I like Fermina or her husband or care for any of the characters in this novel until the very end. The last 20 pages or so are something else. It wraps up this novel with a neat, but ugly bow.
But I cannot overlook some of the 'guises' of love that GGM gives us. There are several instances of rape and death that are treated with an air of indifference and even celebration. That this is what love is. This is the ugly truth of love. It's a disease. These turned me off to GGM and finally when it came to Florentino's relationship with his ward....I could not overlook it.
It may not reflect GGM's personal views, and perhaps it is just realism, but that is not something I could forgive the novel for.
So I come to the end of this novel with not a yarp of triumph, but only with relief that it's over.
I'm having a hard time placing my feelings on Love in the Time of Cholera.
I appreciated much of what this novel has to offer, and I respect GGM for his craft and skill, but I did not enjoy this novel for the most part.
GGM writes beautifully. He writes about beautiful things beautifully, and he writes about ugly, cynical, grotesque, too-human things beautifully to the point I wanted to equate both dichotomies and rail on GGM for loving the ugly, 'immoral' parts of life. But he also writes soooo densely. I began to skim whole passages because they are so mired in details (and I don't think I missed out on much) but he would have passages of details with important plot points dotted within them. It was not something I enjoyed.
The immoral and the ugly, I certainly struggled with. But I have to think back to this excellent question about morality, "The universe is moral, but it shares YOUR view of morality?"
And with that in mind, I think I can digest Love in the Time of Cholera.
It's a love story but not of the romantic storybook kind. This is about love in all its guises and all its false and real forms.
I certainly felt for Florentino and even identified with him in the beginning while also understanding Fermina's capriciousness. But by the end of the novel I realized I did not like him or his obsessive love that I felt was not love but madness. (Love is madness, I believe is another quote well worn quote). Nor did I like Fermina or her husband or care for any of the characters in this novel until the very end. The last 20 pages or so are something else. It wraps up this novel with a neat, but ugly bow.
But I cannot overlook some of the 'guises' of love that GGM gives us. There are several instances of rape and death that are treated with an air of indifference and even celebration. That this is what love is. This is the ugly truth of love. It's a disease. These turned me off to GGM and finally when it came to Florentino's relationship with his ward....I could not overlook it.
It may not reflect GGM's personal views, and perhaps it is just realism, but that is not something I could forgive the novel for.
So I come to the end of this novel with not a yarp of triumph, but only with relief that it's over.