Love in the Time of Cholera

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Summary: Sad, but sometimes too true
Review: I will not go into the story line and characters. Other reviewers have done a great job covering that. I come from the viewpoint of poet and relating to love that can carry you through a thousand years. Florentino Ariza's love is of the truest form. If you enjoy love stories, you will enjoy this. It may even remind of some unrequited love of your past. [e-mail]

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Summary: It's him allright, but a litlle repetitive
Review: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but how do you call it when you imitate yourself?

You know it's a Garcia Marquez (does wonderful, inverosimile stories, does exact lies) but the story itself could be summarised in any of his short stories.

Florentino and Fermina meetings and strange rendez-vous could have been told in another way (not style). It looks like a bad chapter out of "One hundred.."

The characters are three dimensionals, they suffer and think, and they live their tormented life, but there's something missing: perhaps that direct, strong blow that surprised all of us in previos books written by him.

But, again, coming from Garcia Marquez i expected a little more salt. Yes, your attention gets caught, but in someplaces you get trapped, like a fish in a net, but you try to run free.

Interesting approach, superb style, but no surprise.

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Summary: Perhaps one of the best love stories ever written
Review: This incredible yet believable and captivating story is worth reading and reading again. The writing is brilliant as one would expect from a Nobel prize winning author, but the book's power comes from the story itself. Garcia Marquez helps understand the nature of love itself by giving us a paradigm of committment. When I think of how to define love I am drawn to St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians and this story of committment that survives time, disappointment, self-delusion and many other trials and tribulations. This is book is one for the ages. Hopeless romantics will love it.

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Summary: One great love story
Review: I was so suprised by this book. A love story that is realistic because of the lover's imperfection. Love is not a stagent idea in this book. One sees both the pragmatism of rejected love and devotion to the idea of love. The characters are unpredictable and complex. The main love triange in the story is suported by the richness of supporting characters. The supporting characters take on short main story line roles. This book is about all the aspects and degree of love. Devotion,regection, love, lust, fidelity and infidelity are all mixed. The characters struggle with their relationship, which are fluid and unpredictable as life is. The only love story that is as realistic and challenges the reader as much is the Elornor Gehrigs My Luke and I. This is some of the best fiction that exist!

Florinto is in love with Fermina, and is rejected by her after their initial infatutation. Florintio will not give up he is waiting for Fermina husband to die to recindle the romance. Florintino is a man with need who while being faithful in spirit has affair after affair with other women as he waits. Fermina has to deal with a series of marital strife and bliss as Floritino waits out her marriage. Marquez gets to examine a great deal of love relationships in this book. It is excitingand changing as love and life. This is my first Marquez book but it will not be my last. The text is rich in details and may drag a little at times but preserver it is worththe read.

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Summary: Garcia Marquez' best
Review: An absolutely brilliant, magical novel. It seems more accessible than some of his other works, yet takes one's breath away on a regular basis. A classic.

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Summary: THE MANY ASPECTS OF LOVE
Review: Love in the Time of Cholera takes place circa 1880-1930 in an unnamed Caribbean seaport city. The three main characters form a triangle of love, with the hypotneuse being the quintessential romantic, Florentino Ariza, a man whose life is dedicated to love in all its aspects.

As a young apprentice telegrapher, Florentino Ariza falls hopelessly in love with the haughty teenager, Fermina Daza. Although the two barely meet, they manage to carry on a passionate affair via letters and telegrams, until one day, Fermina Daza, realizing that Florentino Ariza is more "shadow than substance," rejects him and marries the wealthy dandy, Dr. Juvenal Urbino instead.

Florentino Ariza, who has sworn to love Fermina Daza forever, is, of course, stricken to the core, but Fermina's marriage is nothing he can't handle. As one century closes and another begins, Florentino Ariza rises through the ranks of the River Company of the Caribbean and sets off on a series of 622 erotic adventures, both "long term liaisons and countless fleeting adventures," all of which he chronicled and all the while nurturing a fervent belief that his ultimate destiny was with Fermina Daza.

Fifty-one years, nine months and four days after Fermina's wedding, on Pentecost Sunday, fate intervenes and Fermina becomes a free woman once again when Dr. Juvenal Urbino dies attempting to retrieve his wayward parrot from a mango tree. Seeing his chance at last, Florentino Ariza visits Fermina Daza after the funeral and declares, "I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love." Fermina's reaction is not quite what Florentino was hoping for. She orders him out of the house with the words, "And don't show your face again for the years of life that are left to you...I hope there are very few of them."

Fermina Daza, however, hasn't quite gotten Florentino Ariza out of her system and the story ends, symbolically, with a river journey into eternity.

It's hard to believe that Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written a book that is better than One Hundred Years of Solitude, but with Love in the Time of Cholera, he has done just that. Not quite magical realism, it is still magic of the highest order and it is pure Garcia Marquez. An exquisite writer, Garcia Marquez tells his tales with passion, control and unblinking humor with just the right amount of the fabulous woven in.

Unlike some of his slightly claustrophobic works, this novel has an almost epic quality and Garcia Marquez handles the shifts in time and character perfectly; from the opening lines you know you're in the hands of a master. The book is flawless: Not one word is out of place, not one sentence is awkward. Lesser authors might slip into the maudlin when writing an entire book on the many aspects of love, but Garcia Marquez never gives us less than crystalline insight into what it really means to live, to love and to live a life of love. The last chapter alone is a masterpiece no one who's loved, or loved and lost, will ever forget.

As the book closes, we sail down the river with Garcia Marquez at the helm, safe in the knowledge that he is a navigator of the highest order, one who can pilot the river of love unerringly. He certainly does just that in this shining, sometimes funny and always uplifting book of flawless perfection.

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Summary: Garcia takes the reader to heights and depths
Review: If ever there was a novel that typified the passion of the tango, this is it. Breathtaking with unexpected moves and turns of plot. Garcia captures the madness of passion and of love,and the hopelessness and the utter faith it can bring or demand. A tour de force. This is one of those rare books that is worth a second or a third reading.

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Summary: amazing love story
Review: it's really a very touching love story. What is true love? It is so prefect if you are beauty Fermina Daza, one man wait for you over fifty years. Maybe true love is a neverending story of waiting. This story tell me that love at first sight is possible.

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Summary: Love Story Like No Other
Review: This wonderfully written book is full of humor and pain. The characters are well developed and the story of a man's long life obsession is delivered with clear and expressive thoughts. One of my all time favorite books, you won't be able to put it down..

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Summary: Thinking of this book always makes me smile.
Review: This is one of the most refreshing love stories of all time. I read it a few years ago and it is still the first book I recommend to friends and strangers. Marquez really transports the reader to a magical world where fantastic things happen all in the name of love. The imagery is other-worldly, the prose is seductive, the plot is riveting, and the characters will stay with you a long time. I think most romantic types will fall in love with this book.

I personally liked this book best out of all his other books, including 100 Years of Solitude. But if you're less romantic, and more cerebral, you may like 100 Years better. Still, both should be read because they are both two of the greatest works of literature of the 20th century.