Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez REVIEW

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[tonybennett]

I've read just about everything Marquez ever wrote, including his short stories, but so long ago that I can only draw on one thing that impressed me, if my memory serves me well. I didn't go back to look at his work, just went with a gut feeling. Marquez has a wonderful sense of place and time, but he does it with simplicity of means. He avoids unnecessary adjectives or adverbs, deriving his effects from observations and contrasts to evoke an atmosphere. It is what makes his style appear so effortless and unlaboured. I'll have to go back some time to see if my memory is playing tricks or not.

[BookishTexan]

I agree completely that GGM is presenting different versions of love -- prosaic love, idealized love, etc. -- and, in some ways, asking us which is the best. Is idealized love better than prosaic love? Is love an excuse for cruelty, for obsession, etc.? I think it is one of GGM's achievements to make love, with all its flaws and virtues, with all its cruelties and beauties, a character.

[martykelly]

***SPOILERS***
I found Dr Urbino's quote, that "marriage is not happiness, but stability" really represents his attitude towards his relationship with Fermina. It explains why he cheats on her, as if it's only natural he do so. That quote stands in firm contrast to a much later one, used to describe Florentino and Fermina's feverish boat trip: "Love becomes greater and nobler in calamity." I feel like that is closer to Marquez' own feelings inside of all the social chaos of the 20th century

[watermelontreeofknowledge]

I might be in the minority, but I like Love in the Time of Cholera more than 100 Years of Solitude. Love and especially unrequited love is meditated in ways that are devastating to the soul. It made me understand the relationship between pain, love, and joy.

[agustinlanzillotta]

Just finished the book thirty minutes ago and I was looking for some review of it. I have to say what you’ve say was exactly how I feel through and in the end of this work of Marquez, this was the only book that in the end left me astonished because I don’t even think happy or sad it’s just so complicated all the thoughts I had and you just managed to make them all clear for me.

Really really good video and I hope you are still working on some book reviews! Greetings from Argentina.

[timkjazz]

Great, great novel, Garcia Marquez was a titan, his books are masterpieces of 20th century novel.

[kristina_lynn]

Ok, I just finished this video and I read it similarly to you - Florentino was a major creep in my opinion. I started off wanting to love him, but objectively he comes off like Joe from You (I dunno if you've seen that show). I am team Dr Urbino!! He was there for Fermina through the hardest parts of life, and didn't just love her based off some idealized version of her. I spent like 20 minutes yesterday thinking about how the book brings up bodily functions so often (Dr Urbinos pee, diarrhea, Florentino being constipated) and it confused me so much lol, but I suppose that's building towards the larger overall theme of love as a physical infliction.

[SEELE-ONE]

I’m a native Spanish speaker and funnily enough, I like also reading GGMs books in English if anything, to see what convoluted translations they have to come up with to imitate his writing style, not to mention the weird and often untranslatable words Spanish and it’s slang can provide

[filipe]

I'm Portuguese so I completely understand what your friend meant with the Italian translation being closer to the original. If I can, I always try to read the book in the original language. I have a decent level of Spanish but I'd never even think of reading GGM in the original. Portuguese is like a brother to Spanish, Italian is a cousin, so your friend is absolutely right. The only downside is English translations tend to be cheaper and easier to get to.

[shmizzleshmazzle]

I think the author used the riverboat company's destruction of the river habitat as a parallel to Florentino's lovelife. It's a book that made me feel like shit because I couldn't stop rooting Florentino.

[patothereaderdiana]

I am Colombian, and read this book while I was a teenager. I loved it, and I have forgotten so many things about it, but what stayed in my mind is that the love that florentino felt for Fermina felt very romantic to me and I think it had to do a lot with my age. I think that idealistic almost infatuation just felt at the time very juvenile, deep and romantic. Somebody loving you that way by just looking at you, without even needing to know you. I really have to re read it, I think I will think very differently about it now that I am older and prefer a more traditional and calm type of love.

[balaamsass]

Only a young person would think that this book is about love. Love is just the name by which Marquez is calling time. This novel is about age.

[rohandatta]

The best thing about the book are the love affairs of Florentino and the way they overlap with each other. The best being of America Vicuna's overlapping with Fermina Daza's .Two diametrically opposite characters one who is ready to be in love and give her all to Ariza and other for whom Ariza has to do this. GGM's plays on taboo are also nice as he makes the reader accept the "old people's" love story of Ariza and Daza but he makes us question subtly about the Vicuna -Ariza love story .Both are taboo in the time the event takes place but the Ariza-Daza is socially acceptable to the extent in the era the novel was written but not the Vicuna -Ariza, thus it is a great study of Taboo and the fluidity of how poeple define right and wrong .

[teoentrelibros]

Latin American here. I read lots of García Márquez' books when I was a teen and I loved or liked all of them. I read this one a week ago and... I really didn't like it. His prose is as beautiful as ever, and I saw most of what you describe in your review. But while you read the book as "very critical of the way he lives his passion for Fermina and it comments on that very clearly", I mostly percieved in it a celebratory tone. Maybe I'm dead wrong here, but for me this is what set this book apart from books like Pedro Páramo and The Death of Artemio Cruz, to name a couple of Latin American classics where male main characters do some hideous stuff. In those books there's a negative tone for their actions, not a celebratory one, and they are portrayed as deeply disturbed men. As for Florentino, I felt he was portrayed as a somewhat eccentric man, but no more than most others in the novel, a rational man (yes, with his own particular rationale, but not like deranged). It also felt the book was compelling me to root for him, at least once the way is clear for him towards the end.


It's weird to feel like the moralist since I rarely see myself as that, but honestly I was expecting one of the following in regards to his actions: a in-story comeuppance, a clear condemning comment from the narrator or maybe even just dropping the celebratory tone. But I didn't see that happen. Again, maybe I read this book blind.

Or maybe I'm just a bit tired of García Márquez and so many writers from my Latin America telling the same story again and again, and also shoe-horning explicit descriptions of adults grooming and having sex with naive and usually family-related minors, or describing 80% of female black characters as "hot" or any other sexually charged term.

[LauraFreyReadinginBed]

One of my favourite books of all time. I agree, it's a complicated look at love. I adore the scene where Florentino drinks the perfume... but then he doesn't really wait for Fermina, he has relationships, he visits prostitutes.. best opening line of all time, too!

[kristina_lynn]

Marquez's style seems so polarizing but it's why I love him. Great review!!

[JuanReads]

I’ll reread A Hundred Years of Solitude soon and I plan to read Life in the Time of Cholera shortly after. Luckily, I’ll read both in the original Spanish. Great review!

[warlockofwordsreturnsrb]

I've wanted to read Marquez for ages & ages, I should hurry up and take the plunge! This looks like a good place to start.

[dhruvkandhari]

Have you read One Hundred Years of Solitude? It is one of my favourite books. Great review as always. You are one of the best, keep it up 😊

[orlandorodriguezbringas]

Good thing that you are reading spanish books in Italian as it gets closer to the original version. Wondering which translator? The one from Italian to Spanish for Umberto Eco was simply fantastic.