Rating: 
Summary: Masterful!
Review: The title of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel says it all: this is an epic story told with witty, often hilarious, insight about thwarted love. Florentino is passionately and irrevocably in love with Fermina, but when Fermina abruptly calls off their courtship, he is helpless to stop her from marrying a physician. Florentino must endure decades of unrequited love while his beloved constructs a life around another man. But this novel is about so much more than the love Florentino harbors for Fermina. This is about love in all difficult times, through social and political change, through obligation and approaching old age, through betrayal and bold declarations. Fermina's husband Juvenal Urbino is as much a part of this novel as the two lovers.As always, Garcia Marquez supplies engaging and surreal detail to his story. Only a writer as skilled as he could succeed in exploring all the events leading to the death of a character who is trying to capture his pet parrot. The absurd and fantastical happenings harbor sharp social commentary, elevating this novel from a trifle about love to a masterpiece. As with all of Garcia Marquez's book, this novel is about gritty reality despite the playful, magic realist overlay. You can feel the enormous satisfaction and fun Garcia Marquez had with this story. He is truly one of the greatest writers to grace the literary landscape. This book is a must-read.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for me
Review: It took me a long time to get through this book. It just didn't draw me in. There are certainly good things that can be said about it. Its scope is impressive. The characters are well developed. There are bits of wisdom interspersed throughout. I think parts of the story will remain with me for a long time. Reading it was just so tedious though. It's very slow moving with constant elaborate descriptions. There are very few breaks in the narrative and the story line was often untracked by digressions that I didn't find interesting. I felt like I was being buried under a never-ending deluge of words. I don't regret reading this book but I wouldn't say I enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: Not a quick read...
Review: Love in the Time of Cholera was highly recommended by a friend of mine, who absolutely loved it, so we chose it for our next bookclub selection. There are four of us in the group, with a wide range of literary likes and dislikes. Two of the group couldn't finish it, while two of us finished it with mixed reviews. Overall, I agree with most that Garcia has a wonderful way of painting a colorful picture. On the other hand, I found the text to drag on, perhaps capturing the eternity of the main character to obtain the object of his desire. I only recommend this book for those who enjoy a long, descriptive, sometimes redundant narrative.
Rating:
Summary: A wonder
Review: I LOVED this book! As a woman, who would not want to be loved as Florentino Ariza loved Fermina Daza. And what woman would not identify with Fermina's proud reluctance to give of herself until she knew that she was truly loved? But what makes this book more important is the poetic and insightful MANNER in which the author views women. He reaches into the depth of total womanhood - not only Fermina Daza's - but ALL the other women we meet in his life. Not all are beautiful, not all are wonderful, but all are unique and alive becauseMarquez incites our interest and intrigues. And note the dedication to his wife, "For Mercedes, of course." What I also think is wonderful about this book is the descriptive narrative of the relationship between Fermina Daza and her husband, Dr. Juvenal Urbino. Marquez knows about long-time marriage and the irritations that occur; he also knows how petty disagreements can cause big ruptures; and, finally, the interdependency between a couple in spite of themselves. In essence, he knows people and when people aren't interesting enough in themselves, he knows how to embellish and create a work of art. Finally, Marquez reminds each of us of the impact of decisions made in our youthful naivete which determine the course of our lives.
Rating:
Summary: It's All About the Love
Review: Love in the Time of Cholera was my first time to experience the writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I am sure I will be reading him more. I was completely captivated by the lavish themes, the lush prose, and the enchanting story. The novel is the entire history of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Early in life, the two fall in love, but for Fermina, it doesn't last, and she marries. Florentino, however, continues to love Fermina his entire life until fifty-one years later he comes back pursuing Fermina.... It is a mesmerizing story which Garcia Marquez uses to explore love from every possible angle. He contrasts it with cholera to reveal so many of its aspects such as its all-consuming nature and its ability to authenticate life, and he explores the varrying and changing relationships between all of the principal characters. There is so much the novel covers that can't be here. I would just say read the novel. It is fairly long, but it reads quickly, and there is so much to gain from it.
Rating:
Summary: For Marquez, a Failure
Review: It is hard for me to critize the great man, but this books doesn't work for me. In fact, it upset me. The prose and storytelling have the typical magic touch of Marquez, with an eye for details and a ethereal way to tell a mundane story. Where the novel succeeded, it succeeded spectacularly. The first quarter of the novel is as close to perfect as is humanly possible. Then it goes downhill (after Femina rejected Flourentino). In terms of plot, I feel that Flourentino's nocturnal career of being alternately a sexual predator and prey is _way_ overdone. It is understandable that he will resort to that avenue of satisfaction, but the endless litany of widows, whores, etc, soon gets repetitive and adds nothing to the development of charater or story. Just some page filler. I confess that I tried three times to finish the book and failed each time, right when Dr. Urbina is dead. That is where my complaint lies: Where the book fails, it doesn't fail gracefully, but with total revulsion. I couldn't finish the book, because of Flourentino's peodophilic adventure (sleeping with his 13 year old grandniece, where he is 78). The visereal reaction just could not let me "witness" Flourentina finally win his love battle and sweet-talk Femina to his bed. I don't know why Marquez put this particular detail here. I have no problem with sexual perversions of the kind, but please, do it artfully and with sympathy (like Lolita), not this another trophy in an old man's many conquests. I sincerely believe that the depiction of women in relation to Flourentino is not true, but a sign of the author's mysogenism. Flourentino's as pathetic and pathologic case of Narcissism sheds some interesting light. Femina and Juvenal by themseleves are not vivid characters, but their interplay in a domestic love relation is very well depicted. The last thing I complain of is Marquez's stylistic quirk. Or I should say his weakness in writing dynamic and minute dialogues. All the dialogues in the book are one-liners, punch lines of a joke or witticism. Initially they are refreshing. After a while, they get old, becoming showoffish, condescending, corny. There are two drawbacks: 1. One-liners are offputting to the reader; 2. They rob the characters of their lives and make the author's mouthpiece. For these various reasons, I cannot give the novel any rating higher than 3 stars. And you won't miss much if you decide to put down the book after the half way mark.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful book on a grand scale
Review: It's amazing that a book written in Spanish can be translated into such beautiful English -- but then again, maybe the beauty of Marquez's ideas transcends language. This is a slow, ponderous read, not for those in search of an action-packed page-flipper. Slow down. Linger over the words. And when you're done, go back and linger again -- that's what I'm about to do.
Rating:
Summary: Difficult to Rate
Review: Briefly put, _Love in the Time of Cholera_ follows the interconnected lives of three characters over a period of fifty-odd years: Florentino Ariza, the illegitemate son of a shipping magnate, Fermina Daza, the woman with whom he is obsessed, and Juvenal Urbino, the doctor for whom she rejects Florentino. It seems a little presumptuous of me to rate a book by a Nobel Prize winning writer, but in all honesty I didn't like this book very much. It struck me as less a story than an OPUS. Although the writing is very, very good, full of rich detail about Central American life at the turn of the last century, I couldn't really relate to the characters or their situations. They seemed inhuman and statue-like, devoid of intelligible emotion and motivation. The style of the narrative also was very difficult to me, as it went on in an almost stream of consciousness manner, jumping from one character to another, from sex to fashion to dentures to revolution in a way that made my head swim. There were very few breaks or natural stopping places and after the first hundred or so pages I got the unpleasant sensation, reading it, that I was trapped in a room with a meandering speaker who wouldn't shut up. All in all, I couldn't relate and I found the characters pathetic. I wanted to tell them all to just get a life. It seemed as though that actually happened at the end, but it wasn't soon enough for me to rejoice in the resolution. I was just glad it was over. The writing was good, though.
Rating:
Summary: Love in the Time of Cholera, or something else?
Review: I like this book. Very much. There is strong characterization, lush description, epic subject matter. I question the notion of love accepted by most readers of this book, however; I think that the broad umbrella of romantic love is invoked to explore the gamut of emotions that are often mistaken for love, but that don't quite measure up: infatuation, obsession, preoccupation, determination, guilt. Does Florentino love Fermina in truth, or is she a fiction of his imagination and a projection of what he desires? Are the choleric symptoms from which Florentino suffers real, or imagined to fill another void: the emptiness of his own life? How can one love without contact, without conversation, without the knowing and being and sharing together that is a conventional courtship? Regardless of what the boy feels, longing letters written in a vacuum cannot constitute actual love, though it can constitute many other emotions, just as strong and just as compelling. I would argue that Marquez feels that the relationship of Fermina and Juvenal is the example of what love actually is; perhaps in the absence of thumping hearts, the sweaty palms and sleepness nights, that brand of love is not recognized as desirable in our time or that of the book's setting. But the Urbino marriage stands as a contrast to the clinging to a desperate hope that Florentino projects. The Urbinos live, share, are annoyed, are reconciled, move on, change. They refelct the reality in sharp contrast to whatever is in the mind and heart of Florentino. The purest form of love in any relationship is the commitment, the decision to say to yourself that regardless of the wrong, regardless of the situation, I will trust and honor and respect and always be there to work with that person. Only after the passing of Dr. Urbino is there the possibility that love in its actual form can exist for Fermina and Florentino; once they can begin to share the details of life, they can begin to plum the depths of what is possible for them.
Rating: 
Summary: Sorry - Only one thing to say: Emperor's New Clothes!
Review: Really - a rank of over 4 stars for this piece of rubbish? Why? I'm sorry - I'm going to offend some people - but this book is right up there with "Unbearbale lightness of being" as an overated pile of horse manure. Eloquent am I not? Why do I say such a thing about a book almost universally acclaimed? - not because I like to run down people who receive such acclaim - but because they deserve it. The author writes at the beginning of the tale that the two main (married) characters have no major falling out throughout their long relationship. Then as the book progresses a major part of the story involves the wife being separated from her husband - she hides from him in her ancestral home. Sorry? What's the point in saying one thing then showing another? Then the famous unrequited love... This guy pines for the other man's wife for 50 years, wasting his life for a love that she does not return (loser! get on with it - find your own life). Meanwhile he has an affair with a 13 year old who as a result of his sexual relationship with her commits suicide!!!! What is happening here? This is perversion. Then the husband dies, the guy with the 50-year-long infatuation pesters the widow with his unrequited love - on the day of the funeral!!! And then continues pestering her until she relents. This is totally sick stuff. No plot, not real point to it all, no real magic that makes this book more than a pile of slowly rotting cellulose with not much worth other than food for weavils. My goodness! I urge you to read it - and then denigate it as the travesty of the art of novel writing.... spread the word near and far - this is a piece of rubbish.... don't burn it - spurn it along with all the other psuedo literary pap that believers of the Emperor's new clothes see as worthy of acclaim. I wish there was a rating lower than 1!!!! I seriously ask those who like such stuff: "What do you see in this sort of thing?" - I'm really interested, as well as worried for your state of mind!
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