About this title: An old man and his childhood sweetheart are united for the first time resulting in the consummation of a n amor interruptus that spans half a century. This uplifting love story is set on the Columbian coast in the early 20th century '
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780140119909ISBN:0140119906
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Pages are clean. Binding is tight. Some cover and edgewear. Slight tanning of pages. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 348 p. Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780140119909ISBN:0140119906
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. tight good clean readable copy light pencil marks and notes some wear to spine. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 348 p. Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780307389732ISBN:0307389731
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Clean pages, no marks or tears, mild reading wear with corners slightly upturned, tight binding, mild shelf wear. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 348 p. Oprah's Book Club (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books USA
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780307389732ISBN:0307389731
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 348 p. Oprah's Book Club (Paperback). Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780140119909ISBN:0140119906
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. MInor creasing and edgewear. Binding sits slightly slanted. Text is clean. Binding is tight. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 348 p. Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780140119909ISBN:0140119906
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Minor creasing and edgewear. Text is clean and bright. Binding is tight. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 348 p. Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780307389732ISBN:0307389731
Description: As New. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Very lightly used clean copy, softcover in excellent condition, no marks or writing, binding tight, spine perfect, covers bright and glossy. read more
"The book ‘Love in the time of cholera’ has been written by the Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The story has been translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman. The story is written in elegant prose. The style of writing is exquisitely flowery. The fustian language used in the book is reminiscent and typical of Marquez’s other works like ‘One hundred years of solitude’ and ‘Autumn of the patriarch.’ This novel is verbose at times. The theme of the story is love. The enduring love affair is based on a fate similar to that which afflicted the author’s parents. The philandering, flamboyant and womanizing character of the protagonist in the story is similar to the real life character of the writer. The story is a tale of an unalloyed, undiminished and unyielding love that transcends time, age, life, birth, disease and ultimately death. The protagonist in the story displays relentless determination to win over the woman he loves in spite of odds that would seem insurmountable. Like Marquez’s other novels this one too is full of acts of consummation of love. This piece of literature has much less surrealism than his most famous novel that has become synonymous with him namely ‘One hundred years of solitude.’ The story is set deep in the heart of an imaginary Latin American country.
The entire story is set against the backdrop of a cholera epidemic that was the scourge of the hapless victims in the late 19th century and early decades of the 20th century in Latin America.
Florentino Ariza is a forlorn lover in his youth who tries to woo the girl he has fallen head over heels in love with namely Fermina Daza. He sings ballads, plays waltzes on the accordion and writes a flurry of love letters to the woman he loves and wants to marry. The girl has also fallen for Florentino Ariza. However, there is a twist in the story. The girl’s father is vehemently opposed to their marriage and will stoop down to any base level to block their path to marital bliss. He threatens to use physical force on the boy and tries to intimidate him. But the boy won’t budge an inch.
The girl’s father is a pugnacious, unscrupulous and domineering man who marries off his daughter to a wealthy doctor named Juvenal Urbino much to the dismay of Florentino Ariza who is shell shocked and broken and is driven to engage in a promiscuous lifestyle but who still hopes that her husband passes away or divorces her and wistfully yearns to marry his beloved someday. He waits patiently for his time to come. After almost nearly half a century of waiting the opportunity arises when Fermina Daza’s husband dies after falling off from a tree. He grabs the chance with both hands and proposes to Fermina Daza when he attends her late husband’s funeral.
She is outraged at his audacity and impertinence and spurns him away. Notwithstanding her refusal he does not lose heart and tries to win her over by writing a torrent of letters to her. At first she is livid at his indecency and thinks of consigning the letters to the dustbin but eventually her fury subsides and she reads his letters. Contrary to what she thinks the content of the letters have a calming effect on her. They help her to overcome her bereavement and she decides to renew her friendship with her childhood sweetheart. Ultimately Florentino Ariza’s patience pays off and Fermina Daza agrees to go on a honeymoon with him in his ship. There is a happy and to some extent even a funny ending that finally they both find solace in coital love at a time when they are very old, withered and in a decrepit state in the twilight of their lives.
Marquez has written a masterpiece. The language as mentioned earlier is highly ornate. However, like all of Marquez’s novels this one too is a little bit unrealistic. It shows that there is light at the end of the tunnel when in reality there should have been none. The novel’s Panglossian ending is beyond the pale of reason."
"While this book had some very lyrical, almost poetic, passages, it was so wordy & dense that it was extremely difficult to read, let alone finish. Some might find appealing the idea of someone loving you as much as Florentino loved Fermina, but to me his love was more that of an obsessive stalker. I did not find Florentino appealing at all, as he came off as a man who never grew out of his adolescent obsession with his first love & viewed sex as a way to deal with the pain of not having her. I had a hard time believing that Fermina would actually want to be with him at all at any point in her life. It also seemed like the author had a strange view of how women reacted to men. I wondered where the actual love was, as well as any direct effect of cholera ? although someone explained to me there is some more scholarly comparison of lovesickness to cholera. All in all, I found the book a total waste of my time & would not have continued to read it, let alone finish it, if it were not for my book club. I would actually have rated this zero stars if I had been able to."
"I thought this book was absolutely awful. When I start reading a book I am determined to finish it, even if I don't like it but I could not get through this one. I love classics, but reading this book was like torture. Save yourself!!"
"GGM is an amazing writer, his prose is fluid and draws you in. I wish my Spanish was still good enough to read this in the original, rather than the translation.
Unlike many of the people that disliked the book, I had no problems with Florentino sleeping around. His promiscuity was no issue for me, I mean, people do this all the time. I struck me as an honest dipction of how some people live. And I even get that he could never really kill his love for Fermina. My personal opinion is that everyone you love you love with a different part of your heart and love in a different way. What I couldn't like was his inability to incorperate his past into his present, to live in the present, to embrace life and enjoy those who cared about him. (Yes, I get that this was intentional.) I felt bad for him, but in the same way I feel bad for addicts...they live in a hell of their own actions. Which, when you think about it, is the case for much of humanity.
I never really got the sense of love from either Florentino or Fermina. I got obsession pure and simple. I do remember being head over heels for someone when I was a teenager and I get that obsessive is the best way to characterize those feelings. But to classify it as love, and a love that is worth dwelling on for 50 years, I never got that in all of the beautiful writing in the book. I felt like I could identify much more with the kind of comfortable, familiar love that is clearly expressed between Fermina and Juvenal. The two "loves" are very different, and the problem is that the marriage and their relationship is so much better illuminated than whatever existed between Fermina and Florentino. Admittedly, the relationship between Florentino and Fermina became much more understandable and relatable when they reconnected during their twilight years.
The only time that I really disliked Florentino's character was in the incident with America. I can overlook the pedophilia, but I can't overlook that he took advantage of someone he was supposed to care about. I can't overlook his abuse of power and I can't overlook his lack of empathy for her. What really "got my goat" was his total lack of remorse when his own horrible actions caused her death.
All in all, I thought this was a beautifully written book with a horribly boring plot. Its worth reading just for the prose, but if I were going to recommend a GGM book it wouldn't be this one, it would be 100 Years of Solitude."
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