Search - Love in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

From Publishers Weekly — The ironic vision and luminous evocation of South America that have distinguished Garcia Marquez's Nobel Prize-winning fiction since his landmark work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, persist in this turn-of-the-century chronicle of a unique love triangle. It is a fully mature novel in scope and perspective, flawlessly tra... more »nslated, as rich in ideas as in humanity. The illustrious and meticulous Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his proud, stately wife Fermina Daza, respectively past 80 and 70, are in the autumn of their solid marriage as the drama opens on the suicide of the doctor's chess partner. Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, a disabled photographer of children, chooses death over the indignities of old age, revealing in a letter a clandestine love affair, on the "fringes of a closed society's prejudices." This scenario not only heralds Urbino's demise soon after when he falls out of a mango tree in an attempt to catch an escaped parrot but brilliantly presages the novel's central themes, which are as concerned with the renewing capacity of age as with an anatomy of love. We meet Florentino Ariza, more antihero than hero, a mock Don Juan with an undertaker's demeanor, at once pathetic, grotesque and endearing, when he seizes the memorably unseemly occasion of Urbino's funeral to reiterate to Fermina the vow of love he first uttered more than 50 years before. With the fine detailing of a Victorian novel, the narrative plunges backward in time to reenact their earlier, youthful courtship of furtive letters and glances, frustrated when Fermina, in the light of awaking maturity, realizes Florentino is an adolescent obsession, and rejects him. With his uncanny ability to unearth the extraordinary in the commonplace, Garcia Marquez smoothly interweaves Fermina's and Florentino's subsequent histories. Enmeshed in a bizarre string of affairs with ill-fated widows while vicariously conducting the liaisons of others via love poems composed on request, Florentino feverishly tries to fill the void of his unrequited passion. Meanwhile, Fermina's marriage suffers vicissitudes but endures, affirming that marital love can be as much the product of art as is romantic love. When circumstances both comic and mystical offer Fermina and Florentino a second chance, during a time in their lives that is often regarded as promising only inevitable degeneration toward death, Garcia Marquez beautifully reveals true love's soil not in the convention of marriage but in the simple, timeless rituals that are its cement.

ISBN-13: 9780307389732
ISBN-10: 0307389731
Publication Date: 2003
Pages: 368
Rating:

Currently 3.2/5 Stars.

474

3.2 stars, based on 474 ratings

Publisher: Vintage International
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

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Top Member Book Reviews

Currently 0.5/5 Stars.

Judith I. (JudithKY) reviewed Love in the Time of Cholera on 2/17/2009 + 8 more book reviews

15 member(s) found this review helpful.

What a waste of a month of my free time.
I'd have finished it sooner but it was a chore.
Newsweek called it "A love story of astonishing power." I call it one long old man's fantasy dreamlife and nothing more.

Currently 0/5 Stars.

Charlene C. (charlovey) reviewed Love in the Time of Cholera on 11/11/2007 + 18 more book reviews

9 member(s) found this review helpful.

I tried to enjoy this book but it was a very slow read for me. I guess it's not my type of book.

Currently 0.5/5 Stars.

Carol R. (hansmrs) - reviewed Love in the Time of Cholera on 3/18/2008 + 99 more book reviews

8 member(s) found this review helpful.

Was not to impressed with this book. It drug on & on. Perhaps someone else will enjoy it, so it's posted as of now!

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Currently 2.5/5 Stars.

Kim F. reviewed Love in the Time of Cholera on 11/9/2011

It starts off a little slow but I'm getting into it now.

Currently 4.5/5 Stars.

Laura R. (lrysso) reviewed Love in the Time of Cholera on 2/1/2011 + 19 more book reviews

Loved the story! This is one of the classics that everyone should read. It tells the story of a depserate, messy love story.

Currently 1/5 Stars.

Julie L. (julesrn) reviewed Love in the Time of Cholera on 10/13/2010 + 4 more book reviews

Slow, boring novel. I tried severeal times to read it and never got more than half way through. I don't know why Oprah liked it. Perhaps you have to read the whole thing, but I just couldn't waste my time with it.

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