Love in the Time of Cholera

I may have missed something with this book, but I don't see how it was some amazing love story. It was the story of the desperate guy, like if it were modern times, you would have gotten a restraining order against him.

This is a challenging book. It feels real, the characters are diverse and divisive. I wound up hating Florentino and I'd argue that none of what he did was love in the sense I'd take it. I mean Gabriel compares love to cholera, right? I don't think we're supposed to agree with his portrayal of love, but it's a challenge to what a conception of love can be. In this novel it seems like Florentino's love is a sickness that affects the entire city. It kills some (which claiming to be a guardian of a 14 year old while secretly seducing her then dumping her is fucked in a lot of ways), cripples others (‘I adore you because you made me a whore'), but it manages to leave Florentino relatively unscathed, happy even in the end. Which is also because he lied to and laid the romance on Fermina, giving her some false impression of his life so they can ride off into the sunset on a love/cholera boat.
I think that's my main problem, Gabriel describes Florentino as a man who gives nothing but takes everything, and it's frustrating to see someone be so self serving and manipulative and then get a happy ending where everyone just buys his obsessive delusion and rides off into the sunset with him. Everything bends to his will, because he needs love. It's more like a tale of sickness than a romance. Ultimately loving yourself is the most important thing so I don't want to knock self service, but when it involves women getting murdered and 15 year olds slitting their throats I wonder if Florentino would think it was all worth it if he didn't get Fermina in the end.

Das ist zwar ein sehr schönes Buch, benötigt aber die passende Stimmung um gelesen, genossen und verstanden zu werden. Ich habe es teilweise unterwegs gelesen (da ich damals viel mit der Bahn gefahren bin) und teilweise zu Hause, bevor ich schafen gegangen bin, und ich habe wirklich den Unterschied beim Lesen gemerkt. Abends vor dem Bett gehen habe ich die Geschichte viel leichter verfolgt als im Zug: die Handlung schreitet nämlich meistens langsam voran, was nicht gut zu der Hektik vom Pendeln passt! Manches scheint sogar überflüssig zu sein (und das ist auch der Grund warum ich dem Buch nur vier Sterne gegeben habe und nicht fünf). Die ersten 70 Seiten dienen zwar dazu, den Leser in die Geschichte einzuführen, aber meiner Meinung nach gibt es auch viele Details, die überflüssig sind. Das einführende Kapitel wirkt also entsprechend schwer, aber man sollte nicht den Fehler machen, das Buch dabei aufzugeben, denn was danach folgt wesentlich interessanter ist.
Was die Überflüssigkeit betrifft, gilt dasselbe auch für die Berichte der Geschlechtserfahrungen des Protagonists, Florentino Ariza, dessen Erlebnisse zwar zeigen, dass er davon etwas lernt, da das ganze ihm in dem Umgang mit Frauen hilft, aber nach einer Weile werden diese Berichte einfach viel zu viele und uninteressant für den Leser.
Die weibliche Protagonistin, Fermina Daza, hat mir am Besten gefallen, bzw. wie Ihr Charakter von Márquez beschrieben und entwickelt wurde, aber dazu muss man gestehen, dass der Schriftsteller seine Figuren und ihre Charaktere wirklich gut mit Sorgfalt bestimmt; das ist auch warum ich mich der Protagonistin so gebunden fühlte. Was mir auch sehr gut gefallen hat, ist dass ich, als Leser, mich nicht entscheiden konnte, für welchen der zwei männlichen Protagonisten ich eigentlich war, da Márquez es so gut schafft, den Leser beide “Rivalen” gleichgültig lieben zu lassen.
Insgesamt also ein gutes Buch, das aber an Überflüssigkeit und Langsamkeit ein bisschen verliert.

Absolutamente imperativa a leitura!

Uma história que se estende por mais de meio século. Porém se engana quem descreve como um livro sobre um triângulo amoroso, Amor nos tempos do Cólera narra diversos e muitos relacionamentos, ilusões, desejos e acasos.

É inacreditável quão fascinante o autor navega pelo tempo, com cheiros, memórias e construções lindas. Especialmente como ele usa algumas imagens repetidas de jeitos diferentes: o cheiro da amêndoa que abre o livro é retomado pra falar do cor dos olhos de Fermina Daza e de novo retomado no local de encontro dos primeiros noivos e isso vai se repetindo; o mesmo acontece com o próprio cólera, as vezes como doença, como raiva ou como hipérbole.

Fico imaginando que poderia existir um livro paralelo só com todas as cartas trocadas. Pra um livro com tantas e tantas cartas, é até incrível não lermos nenhuma delas como leitor. Só demonstra a maestria do Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Okay, I'm sorry, I just don't get the hype. The prose and everything were brilliantly done, poetry almost. HOWEVER, the MMC was awful, AND a pedophile - grooming a 14 year old girl whose parents had entrusted him to look after because he could see how beautiful she would become?! Disgusting. I know time/place/culture, I get that, but he was grateful after she kills herself when he ends their "affair" that she didn't tell her parents. I'm sorry, but that screams that he was well aware that he was doing something wrong.

Loved the FMC, until she gives in to MMC, her pragmatism and realization that she was just infatuated, though abrupt, garnered her my respect.

The writing is amazing buy some points of the story like adult minor relationship, rape and prejudice against black women made me lower the rating

Esta ha sido mi tercera incursión en la obra de Gabriel García Márquez, tras Cien años de soledad (que releí tiempo atrás) y Crónica de una muerte anunciada. Ambas me parecieron obras maestras, pero tal vez debido al tiempo transcurrido desde sus lecturas, no recuerdo que dejaran en mí esta sensación de redondez, de plenitud, de satisfacción tan grande al haber disfrutado tanto de una obra literaria. He reído a carcajadas, muchas veces a lo largo del libro. Me he emocionado otras (sin llorar porque no soy de lágrima fácil), me ha hecho reflexionar sobre los sentimientos universales y sobre todo el Amor, con mayúscula, el tema universal, eterno e inmutable a pesar de las infinitas variantes que ofrece al ser humano y que el autor recoge con tanta profundidad, belleza y sencillez. Creo sinceramente que ese es el fin último y la esencia de la verdadera literatura. Cualquier escritor desearía evocar en el lector todo el universo de sentimientos que García Márquez despierta en mí durante la lectura de esta novela. ¡Gracias de corazón, Gabo!

Maybe it's my conservative Christian upbringing that made me dislike this book. I understand it's a commentary on how society was and still is. We tend to be obsessive about things and people mostly. And in our journey to obtain them, we go down roads that are not healthy for us. The writing was great, the descriptions, everything. Just that for me I just couldn't get into the book.

Más que leído, abandonado. No entiendo el revuelo por este libro, la única parte que me gustó fue la de la esposa del médico trayendo un loro a la casa

Escrita con un estilo delicioso, es una novela que está llena de situaciones idílicas que casi siempre terminan con una merecida cachetada de realidad. Una espera de más de medio siglo que casi se ve arruinada “por una cagada”.

I did not like it at all for several reasons. The first being the same reason I hated Wuthering Heights: obsession disguised as love. But this also had the additional cavalier discussions of rape and pedophilia. I don't care about when it was written. It sucks.

Audiobook had nice storyteller voice, but beyond that...I didn't get it. Wandering tale from character to character, not sure when ‘love' enters the picture unless the whole point was that love wasn't really love then?

The writing itself is great, but honestly the story is creepy AF. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza met as teenagers and Florentino quickly falls in love with Fermina. After a few years of “dating”, Fermina realizes that Florentino is not the man for her, and rejects him. Up to this part of the story, everything seems fine. But then it all goes downhill from here...

Fermina eventually marries Dr Juvenal Urbino, a wealthy doctor. Florentino on the other hand wants to remain “faithful” to Fermina and decides not to marry anyone. He does, however, end up sleepy with a myriad of different women, including América Vicuña, a 14-year-old girl who is sent to live with him. For a 70-something year old man to be intimate with a 14-year old girl is one thing, and add to that the fact that she eventually kills himself after he rejects her in the end!

Finally, after 50 years of marriage, Dr Urbino dies after falling from a ladder while trying to rescue his parrot. Florentino learns of this news and decides to re-confess his love to Fermina all these years. She initially outright rejects him, but after his consistent advanves, he wears her down and they become intimate.

So is the moral of the story here that you can be a creep and still get what you want?

The writing itself is great, but honestly the story is creepy AF. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza met as teenagers and Florentino quickly falls in love with Fermina. After a few years of “dating”, Fermina realizes that Florentino is not the man for her, and rejects him. Up to this part of the story, everything seems fine. But then it all goes downhill from here...

Fermina eventually marries Dr Juvenal Urbino, a wealthy doctor. Florentino on the other hand wants to remain “faithful” to Fermina and decides not to marry anyone. He does, however, end up sleepy with a myriad of different women, including América Vicuña, a 14-year-old girl who is sent to live with him. For a 70-something year old man to be intimate with a 14-year old girl is one thing, and add to that the fact that she eventually kills himself after he rejects her in the end!

Finally, after 50 years of marriage, Dr Urbino dies after falling from a ladder while trying to rescue his parrot. Florentino learns of this news and decides to re-confess his love to Fermina all these years. She initially outright rejects him, but after his consistent advanves, he wears her down and they become intimate.

So is the moral of the story here that you can be a creep and still get what you want?

I'm not sure how to actually review this. So many things have been said about this book and I'm definitely not worth to add anything more. But I will say that the depictions of human imperfections and of how grit defies aging are quite something.

An excellent book that doesn't quite live up to the hype. The prose is fantastic, evocative, and engaging, but the story is hindered by a meandering plot and characters that are difficult to like, especially the super creepy Florentino Ariza.

Hermoso libro.

Although I don't remember it very well, I absolutely loved One Hundred Years of Solitude when I read it in either late high school or early college. This had been on my list for years and I figured Coronavirus pandemic was as good a time as any to read something set in the time of a cholera pandemic. The character development is beautiful and this felt honest in a way that only fiction can really pull off, but I just could not get my brain to gel with Marquez's writing style. I had to focus pretty consistently throughout instead of falling into the story. I liked it but was a little underwhelmed because of that.

Yes, I used my first week of quarantine to read “Love in the Time of Cholera.” It just felt appropriate. Granted, both love and cholera hang more like specters in this novel than main characters. I always think of Marquez as a classics writer, and I forget that he only passed away 6 years ago, and this novel was published in 1985. More than the story, I found this a fascinating study in prose and character creation. The meandering, conversational exploration of dozens of vibrant lives is a feat, and even in translation the language resonates.

It's called a love story, but it explores love in a broad context, from the naive love at first sight of youth to the comfort of growing into love, from fleeting romances and taboos, to rediscovering romance in old age. Love is a disease; love is a medicine. Love is an equalizer; Love is a power struggle. I'm too far away from my Literature degree to leave a better review than this.

Márquez is, without a doubt, one of the better writers to have graced the English language. His descriptions are as vivid as paintings, and his character development is nothing short of fantastic.

Where he really, truly excels is poetry within his prose. Márquez manages to say so incredibly much within so little space. His development and encapsulation of side-characters, of places, and of events is as much artwork as it is poetry.

However, his development of protagonist characters is languid and, at times, over-wrought. It's really difficult to believe that anyone could be so absolutely full-of-themselves as the several main figures of this story are. However, this novel is as much a depiction of the lives of nobles as it is a decrying of how the lower classes lived, so it's likely very much intended. Regardless of intended effect, it still makes the novel drag on more than it would otherwise.

Beautifully written and delightfully structured!

When I first started reading this book I didn't think I would be giving it such a high rating! The style of this novel was rather slow and tiresome at first, which considering it's age now makes sense. And I believed I would be able to appreciate this novel but never fall in love with it. However I was very wrong! This novel blends beautifully the lush history of the Caribbean during the time of cholera with its political and social context shown through the different class backgrounds of the two characters Fermina Daza (who is of a lower social background ) to her husband Juvenal Urbino. However the novel also in depth explores themes of fate, passion, ageing, death, fate and infidelity. The combination of both of these intriguing topics for me makes this book an extra fascinating and engaging read. Wholeheartedly my current busy schedule has made it hard for me to fully engage in this novel as I've been forced to dip in and out but some of the reflections and musings this novel created, made me certain I could fully appreciate and enjoy this book better with a re read as it's brimming with beautiful reflections on love and ageing. I love that this book had a non conventional structure as well as a non-linear time frame. And I also loved that the characters exploration is the main storyline with little plot development as those are the kind of books I love. If you enjoy any of the mentioned themes or styles of this novel, I highly recommend this one to you. A modern classic I am so pleased I got round to reading. A slow burning gem of a novel that will stick with you long after the last page!

Loved the witty writing style!

Just a beautiful story <3

While some might see Love in the Time of Cholera as a love story, the relentless narrative of Gabriel García Márquez challenges such an interpretation. Instead, the novel presents love in many of its forms. From forbidden and unrequited love to obsession and desire, Márquez leaves no aspect of love unexamined. [b:Twilight 41865 Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1) Stephenie Meyer https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1700522826l/41865.SY75.jpg 3212258], [b:Wuthering Heights 6185 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388212715l/6185.SY75.jpg 1565818], [b:The Great Gatsby 4671 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490528560l/4671.SY75.jpg 245494], and [b:Great Expectations 2623 Great Expectations Charles Dickens https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631687432l/2623.SY75.jpg 2612809] are grouped in my head because in their exploration of human emotions their characters' actions often blur the lines between affection and selfishness. Fermina's decision to marry for stability rather than happiness leaves her feeling like a ghost in her own life, while Florentino's 622 reveal a darker side to his romantic nature. In my reviews of these stories, I often find myself having to justify why I am so drawn to the theme of unrequited love. Recognizing that literature doesn't always depict healthy relationships or idealized versions of humanity, some of us still find ourselves drawn to these stories because they reflect aspects of our own experiences, emotions, and struggles. Themes of longing, desire, and emotional connection in dark settings resonate with readers with trauma, as they reflect the complexities of their experiences, potentially fostering acceptance of oneself. Despite their flaws, these characters are multidimensional enough to invite empathy. I love that.