Rating: 
Summary: Great ideas, but less than enjoyable
Review: While enjoying the great ideas presented in this book, I cannot say that I actually much enjoyed the novel itself. Contrasting with most other reviews, the primary theme of this novel is illusion vs reality. The love in this novel is primarily illusion...which is shown by the obsessive love of Florintino. Again, illusion is shown through the entire character of Florintino, with his 622 affairs is a completely unbelievable character. This illusion causes Florintino to decrepitate and to always appear old. THis causes as parallel with Florintino and the land, which is also decrepetating. Eventually, Fermina is able to see thorugh this illusion and see reality....like Urbino is able to see the reality of the land. Several types of love are presented in this story, and it is very difficult to tell which is true love. It is arguable that there is no example of true love between two people in this story....and that the only example of true love and freedom is what Fermina felt at the end of the novel. It is also arguable that Florintino never really loves Fermina, but simply loves the dream of perfection that he created with her (which is evident when he plays the Crowned Goddess at the end). There are several other great ideas that Marquez adds to the story to support these themes. Overall, the novel was interesting, but slightly less than enjoyable. I felt that the overwelming detail often hurt the novel, as the explicit scenes of Florintino and the other women. Even though this fit with the novel, as did the disgusting references to cholera, it did not make for the most pleasent read in the world if you're simply looking to read for enjoyment. Nether-the-less, one must respect Marquez's themes, which are quite advanced.
Rating: 
Summary: The truth about human nature.
Review: The mood and setting of this book are astonishing. The author describes every detail, thought, motivation, and feeling with such vivid accuracy that no doubt exsists for the reader in what is going on in the story. The book is like a front row seat in the lives and minds of the characters.At first, the non-traditional, non-linear fashion that the author uses to deliniate the tale left me a little unsettled, but after I experienced the rich feeling and emotion that permeates each page, I quickly adjusted to the style of writing. I have been so impressed with this book that I have begun to order other works from Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I believe that this man is perhaps one of the literary jewels of our time and that his work should be enjoyed by all. Go ahead, buy this selection! You will not be disappointed! You will see yourself in a new light because you have the prophetic insights into the human condition and the way that people are. Most importantly, you will be moved to feel, sympathize, despise, and understand the characters within as if they were part of you. The beauty of this novel is that Garcia-Marquez deals in the simplicity of humanism in real ways, and what unfolds is a real beauty.
Rating: 
Summary: A fabulous chronicle
Review: Intricate imagery, lush description, and well-rounded characters. Love is a study on aging, sexuality, death, and the corruption of society which is what "cholera" is a metaphor for. Many argue about whether this book is a modernist or postmodernist novel because Gabriel Garcia Marquez places the characters amidst a postmodern world, but in the end they are still retaining their emotions and hope.
A worthy read for any well-read individual.
Rating:
Summary: Enchanting
Review: Almost everything Florentino Ariza has done in his adult life has been for Fermina Daza, Ariza's young love who shunned him decades ago. Florentino Ariza's devotion has lasted through his rise up the occupational ladder, stagnant disapproval from Fermina Daza's father, several meaningless erotic affairs, Daza's marriage to the stern intellectual, Dr. Jubinal Urbino, and fifty years. This impressive, convincing and charming love story acts as a vehicle for Marquez's vivid descriptive powers. While reading this book one feels as if he or she is smelling the perfumed letters; breathing in the wet, moist mornings; tasting the fried fish and feeling the sticky air. Marquez effectively casts his spell and the reader is ensnared with with Florentino Ariza and his feelings of longing and misery.
Rating:
Summary: A study in people, human nature. MUST READ!
Review: The love, relationships, sex and realistic examples of human suffering, failing, trying again, making mistakes in choices in relationships, hurting others, getting hurt.... These are BEAUTIFULLY shown in this book. You feel you know the characters personally and want to tell them what to do! I have to say, although loving someone and waiting for them for 50 years is admirable, Florentino Ariza also kind of reminded me of a stalker! A fatal attraction? I think he seemed that way to Fermina Daza too, but this "fatal attraction" turns out not to be fatal. A lovely display of the possibilities of love. This book is just a wonderful study of life and love, stunningly detailed, so well-written prose that you just have to marvel at Garcia Marquez's talent as a great writer, one of the best! I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys good writing. Many stars to Gabriel Garcia Marquez!!
Rating:
Summary: Love in the Time of Cholera
Review: An outstanding,intelligent novel. The author has an amusing, witty style. How wonderfuly to read a positive, romantic story about old age. Marquez is a master at description and story telling. I can't wait to read another novel by him.
Rating:
Summary: Must Read
Review: If you read nothing else by Garcia Marquez, you must read this one. Gorgeous.
Rating:
Summary: My First Dip Into Latin American Literature
Review: Filled with strong imagery, this novel rightly deserves high marks. The river ride at the end is especially poignant and brings the full meaning of the novel home.
Rating:
Summary: Love becomes more than love.....
Review: I was overwhelmed by this story and no sooner did I realize that when reading "Love in the time of cholera", I was indeed exploring a vast ocean of love, in its entire spectrum - wild love, radical love, enduring love, fleeting love, furious love, youthful love and all its aptitudes. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in his enchanting ways of crafting a story has made a beautiful sculpture of love made from a crude and natural boulder of human experiences. At first the story lays down the moods and the inevitabilities of death, and as its timeline forwards and recoils from one history to another, it gathers acceleration to lay down love in a cavalcade of tragic and comic relationships. The sensuist Florentino Ariza's life is fueled by his love for Fermina Daza and nurtured by his love for his other numerous women. He lives in the boundless illusion of winning Fermina's affection by all means, and his courting strikes one as odd in all its grace and beauty. He serenades from a paupers graveyard believing that the winds carry the string melodies into her lair, he writes love poems and lyrical letters to her and sends constant telegrams and believes his overtures will be finally requited even when the incorrigible Fermina had to deny him and until she marries Dr. Juvenal Urbino. And for half a century, Florentino Ariza labors his life for love and he is a victor of it. The story teems with scents that waft the characters to nostalgia- of bitter almonds for an unrequited love, of pensive scent of white gardenias for a memory of a lover, of woody odor of chestnuts for a memory of Paris, of the aroma of camphor that reminded one of old age. Its plots pay homage to allegories- of games of chess and voyages on rivers, of suicide, liaisons and cholera. It becomes a palimpsest of politics, passion, religion and absurdity. Its wholeness takes one's breath away. So that when one is smitten, think of this story - that love and disease are not so poles apart, and that its pangs of a moment's torture will have its rewards in an exciting envelope full of sweet scents. I just had an awesome time with this novel. Incredible how it had been.
Rating:
Summary: An exquisite balance of humor and drama: best of the best
Review: In a coastal Colombian city, between the XIX and the XX century, in a time when the cholera and the internal wars were making Colombia bleed in a way not too different from today's drugs wars and guerrilla, the literature Nobel-prize winner Garcia Marquez sets up a brilliant story. The simplistic person would deem the novel simply as a love story, and it is so. But also it is much more. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza live through over fifty years of separation, during which the core of the story takes place. All the time, Florentino (a dramatic man who writes poems and is permantently dressed up in funeral-looking dark clothes with disregard for the heat of the Caribbean sun) remains faithful to the juvenile love for Fermina he feels within, while he lives a life full of the craziest and funniest love and flirting anecdotes. Fermina... well, that's part of the story, and I won't spoil it, but I can tell you that she gives Florentino the hardest of times during those fifty years, testing him, sometimes knowingly, sometimes without even suspecting it. At all times, with the coming and going of what I'd like to call 'secondary' characters, such as Dr. Juvenal Urbino, Uncle Leon XII, or Leona Cassiani, there is a big character that is always present, which is the environment surrounding Florentino and Fermina. There are countless and very enjoyable moments throughout the book, when the environment follows the lead of Florentino's mood, raining, for example, if he feels blue. The subtlety with which Garcia Marquez achieves this is nothing short of an act of genius. The novel as a whole is an incredibly enjoyable piece of literature, one of those which I'm convinced will stand the test of the ages to come. Not in vain is it considered one of the greatest books of the 20th century. And believe me: if you don't laugh very much while reading this book, you will have a very hard time finding ANYTHING to make you laugh. One final comment: if you're able to read in Spanish, grab the copy of the book in Spanish. You will enjoy it far more. If not, don't worry: you'll just regret that you don't know the language of Cervantes, so you can laugh harder while reading Garcia Marquez. :)
|
