Love in the Time of Cholera (edit title)

• Rated 4 stars

“Beautifully written, but I found it rather boring.”

• Rated 0 stars

“Once again, I am not sure how to rate this book, it was not terrible but I found it a chore to finish. I read it for my book club, we were in search of a "great love story" so we chose this book. Frankly, I found this to be more about obsession than about love. I may have had too high of expectations going into reading the book.”

• Rated 0 stars

“Amazing!!!!!!!”

• Rated 2 stars

“I didn't like this book. Didn't like the way it was written. Over 600 affairs......come on”

• Rated 5 stars

“More than just a simple love story, the story examines various kinds of love. It is heartfelt, poignant and at times, very amusing.
Perfection in a novel form. ”

• Rated 3 stars

“Easier read than 100 Years...”

• Rated 2 stars

“Story about a man who "carries a torch" for a woman for over 70 years. Very few chapters and I had difficulty keeping focused in the story (maybe it was because of the translation and lack of chapters). Will be interested in seeing the movie to understand it better. ”

• Rated 2 stars

“I didn't really read this book very thoroughly. My friend recommended it, but I found it to be a slow read.”

• Rated 5 stars

“My favorite book of all time. The story of unrequited love. ”

• Rated 0 stars

“I think I share a love/hate relationship with this one. The book starts off describing the daily routine of an elderly Dr. Urbino and Fermina on the day leading to his death. I can’t describe how slow this section of the book was. The first 80-100 pages rambled on endlessly until I was bored to tears.

Once Dr. Urbino passes away and the flashback starts, things get a bit more interesting. The teenage love story between Fermina and Florentino is insipid, but I loved the chronicle of their lives after they move on from the relationship.

Florentino is an eternal romantic in love with the ideal love (Fermina). In order to forget Fermina he has numerous affairs with women and seems to love all of them without committing himself solely to any one of them. He makes an unusual but rather endearing Casanova until I came to a rather unsavory love affair towards the end of the novel where he seduces a 13-year old girl who is his ward.

Consider the following description of the seduction:

"She was still a child…with braces on her teeth and the scrapes of elementary school on her knees…, and he cultivated her with a slow year of Saturdays at the circus, sundays in the park with ice cream, childish late afternoons, and he won her confidence, he won her affection, he led her by the hand, with the gentle astuteness of a grandfather, toward his secret slaughterhouse."

Stomach-churning? no? how about the fact that at this point in the story Florentino is about 60 odd years old!

Even more harsh is his abandonment of her, and her eventual suicide.

This section was really difficult and disturbing reading for me. I just could not get past the fact that no matter what the cultural background, romantic nature, the historical time period, fear of aging, etc., Florentino is a child molester. Even more disturbing was the fact that he pays absolutely no price for his heartless behavior.

Apart from this incident, I did not have any issues with the book. I think I did not have the best translation because I did not really see any signs of magical realism that Marquez is famous for. But, then this could have been lost in translation, I suppose? Some aspects of this book do not look like they lend well to translation.

However, I have to grant that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a master writer. I mean anyone who is able to craft a story in which the protagonist beds 622 different women over the course of his life and make it seem like something so much more than simply sex really can write!”