I just finished Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. I have friends who are reading it, or want to read it, so no worries- I won't give away the ending. The story describes a fifty-year love triangle between Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza and Doctor Juvenal Urbino. It is a story of heartbreakingly unrequited love. This drive for love provides the very purpose for Florentino Ariza's being, & his entire life is dedicated to obtaining it in return from Fermina Daza. As he lives with this love for Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza finds that being in love is a literal disease, comparable to cholera. He suffers the same physical agony & pain that one might suffer from an actual disease.
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I've determined that I really enjoy books that scan a lifetime {think East of Eden}. When finished, they make me feel like I have experienced a lifelong friendship with someone, or have perhaps suffered life's hardships with them, & maybe even shared a bit of their pain. That's how I felt when I finished Love in the Time of Cholera. I really liked it. It was a fascinating story of a time, place & culture with which I am not familiar. The pace & tempo were similar to East of Eden. Point being - stick with it, & be patient. It's worth it.
2 comments:
I do want to read this. The movie guy at my work didn't give it great reviews- he thought that it doesn't really develop the love between the two main people- that the main guy is mostly just seen as a womanizer and it's hard to imagine how or why he really loved this woman so much, etc. So I am guessing the book would fill in these gaps much better.
I guess that you get a really great sense in the book that everything that he does in his life (everything) is either in effort to receive her love, or in preparation for it.
I typically vote for the book vs. the movie. Rarely is the opposite true.
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