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Elizabeth's Reviews > Love in the Time of Cholera
Love in the Time of Cholera
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This book contains the most single lines in one work that I wish to lift from their pages and paste around my house so that I may bask in their glory on a daily basis.
Reading other reviews of this text always puzzles me. No, I don't need everyone to love what I love to the extent that I love it, but it just seems that those who detest it have really suffered a failure at literacy. With the risk of further offense, I will state that I believe the culprit is that cute little "Oprah's Book Club." This is not a work on which you stick a celebrity (if that's what she is) seal of approval and then throw in a gym bag or beach bag and sneak some pages in here and there because some famous lady told you that you should. It's serious literature.
And yet hilarious. Marquez shines as a comic genius of irony (the significance of cholera to this book is, itself, genius storytelling) and critical examiner of human relationships. An exploration on love-- love in all forms-- is conducted as thoroughly as if it were a science project. Perhaps this is where Marquez loses the aforementioned displeased readers, who wish to bottle love in a neat definition or notion that closely reflects the love they are experiencing in their own lives. The world is much broader than our silly little individual plights, my friends, and the experience of love changes if you are to ask an old woman, young man, or adolescent girl to define it. Marquez captures each of their stories, and more, and never asks that his reader compare these to their own experience of love, he simply describes them and includes them in Love's definition.
I find the courtship between Fermina and Florentino dazzling and spot-on. Yes, it is obsessive and incredibly fickle, but that is MY experience of adolescent love! I find new love between octogenarians inspiring and heartwarming, because after an entire lifetime, what two other individuals better know themselves and, thus, are able to give themselves entirely to each other? I also wasn't offended (as many are) by Florentino's relationship with the under-age America. Again, Marquez is being exploratory, and he gives no love or relationship safe haven from his literary microscope. He doesn't purport to create "perfect" and "ideal" characters, and how many of us can truly say we "like" our own mates ALL of the time anyway? This isn't "The Notebook," and some of the depicted relationships might come across as unsavory and vile to some of our self-righteous American eyes, but isn't such narrow-mindedness a bad mate for *real* literature anyway?
"Love in the Time of Cholera" is fine literature. Superbly written, beautiful and rich, I see this as nothing short of a masterpiece.
Reading other reviews of this text always puzzles me. No, I don't need everyone to love what I love to the extent that I love it, but it just seems that those who detest it have really suffered a failure at literacy. With the risk of further offense, I will state that I believe the culprit is that cute little "Oprah's Book Club." This is not a work on which you stick a celebrity (if that's what she is) seal of approval and then throw in a gym bag or beach bag and sneak some pages in here and there because some famous lady told you that you should. It's serious literature.
And yet hilarious. Marquez shines as a comic genius of irony (the significance of cholera to this book is, itself, genius storytelling) and critical examiner of human relationships. An exploration on love-- love in all forms-- is conducted as thoroughly as if it were a science project. Perhaps this is where Marquez loses the aforementioned displeased readers, who wish to bottle love in a neat definition or notion that closely reflects the love they are experiencing in their own lives. The world is much broader than our silly little individual plights, my friends, and the experience of love changes if you are to ask an old woman, young man, or adolescent girl to define it. Marquez captures each of their stories, and more, and never asks that his reader compare these to their own experience of love, he simply describes them and includes them in Love's definition.
I find the courtship between Fermina and Florentino dazzling and spot-on. Yes, it is obsessive and incredibly fickle, but that is MY experience of adolescent love! I find new love between octogenarians inspiring and heartwarming, because after an entire lifetime, what two other individuals better know themselves and, thus, are able to give themselves entirely to each other? I also wasn't offended (as many are) by Florentino's relationship with the under-age America. Again, Marquez is being exploratory, and he gives no love or relationship safe haven from his literary microscope. He doesn't purport to create "perfect" and "ideal" characters, and how many of us can truly say we "like" our own mates ALL of the time anyway? This isn't "The Notebook," and some of the depicted relationships might come across as unsavory and vile to some of our self-righteous American eyes, but isn't such narrow-mindedness a bad mate for *real* literature anyway?
"Love in the Time of Cholera" is fine literature. Superbly written, beautiful and rich, I see this as nothing short of a masterpiece.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
May 1, 2008
–
Finished Reading
June 11, 2008
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skd
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rated it 5 stars
Dec 03, 2008 11:40AM
Thank you for your wonderful feedback here. I found myself in agreement with what you've said here, especially the point about the oprah sticker contributing to these other negative reviews. This book is a work of art, a masterpiece, literature to be savoured, sentences to re-read over and over, not for folks who liked the love story in the Notebook.
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Ah, isn't his prose just wonderful. I can take this book as well as "Hundred Years," read one page and feel my spirits lifting. While the translator is excellent, the Spanish is so much richer! Alas, not everyone has the luxury of studying Spanish, just for fun.
Thanks for thoughtful review. Don't underestmate Oprah's book club, though. Both "Love in the time of cholera" and "One hundreds years of sollitude" were choices of Oprah's club in 2004 and 2007. There's a list of club's books on wikipedia; it includes some really serious writers, like Toni Morrison, Cormac Mc Carthy and Leo Tolstoy. Cute little club? ;) I don't think so.
I COMPLETELY agree with your review! I keep reading all these negative reviews of people who were like " I didn't like the main character" or "this is not a good love story." They missed the point, but you got it! This is definitely a serious piece of literature and there were many passages that I want to keep with me forever. It was some beautiful writing about some very complicated people.
There is an epidemic these days of people panning books that have a flawed or sometimes detestable protagonist. Truly folks, it is not hard to hide that kind of stuff. It does, however, take some courage to show.
Exactly. That's what I thought too. Literature is not here to always portray the characters and form you like or can relate too. They are just some human beings picked from the many billions around the world and we all know that the world is full of screwed up people which doesn't mean we can shut our eyes towards them and refuse to read about them. People are so obsessed with a protagonist being an all righteous and pious person ignoring the underlying realism which is the very beauty of Garcia's writing. Florentino was not there to inspire us, neither are we obliged to fantasize him. Nor was any other character. They were just among the many hundards we encounter every day. Right in some things wrong in others but always being human.
I agree with you- this is not a book to be read over a weekend- I read each paragraph multiple times to really feel what the characters felt and couldn’t be more rewarded for that!
