Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera

This product of Continuum Contemporaries is a must read for those who are unfamiliar with García Márquez' style and thematics. Also, it prepares the reader with a good historical background -- Colombia at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth when cholera was rampant in the coastal areas of the country. My suggestion would be to read the novel and then read this work with the idea of rereading the novel and understanding it better for having read the background material. Any work by this author needs to be read and reread -- you get something new out of it every time!

The book, Love in the Time of Cholera, is about love and all its forms and all ages. Gabriel Garcia Marquez used a wide variety of characters in the love story of fermina and Floentino to show love and all its forms. Marquez blends poetry and visual descripions that are so visual that you feel that you are there.The book is a captivating and intriguing story of love. Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza are in their teens when they fall passionately in love. Their love is unquestionable until she moves away and returns saying their love was an illusion. She moves on and accepts the proposal of a wealthy Doctor Juvenal Urbino. As they live in their separate worlds, Fermina lives the life of a wife and mother while Florentino hols on to the memory of waht they had together. In their years of separation, Florentino goes through his 622 affairs in which he will try to satisfy his lust and compensate his loss of Fermina. But no love is greater than Fermina's, as he pledged himself never to marry another. After the unexpected death of Dr.Urbino, he again pledged his love to Fermina after 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. One signficant moment was when Fermina returns and realizes that her love for Florentino was an illusion. She rejected him and told him to forget what they had together. This is important because whole book reflects around this moment as Florentino and Fermina lives their separate lives. Fermina moves on to her own separate world while Florentino dwells on that moment of rejection and vows that one day he will gain her love. This book is captivating and I would recommend it to anyone who loves a good love story.

Just picked this up and am already planning to assign it to one of my classes on modern lit--that ideal book that explains what Marquez is up to without either oversimplifying or overcomplicating. Fahy distills the most important material from research around Marquez without forcing us to wade through information that would only be of interest to someone writing a dissertation; furthermore, his voice is lively and approachable in doing so. This book is enjoyable reading suited to a wide audience--I hope to see more similar books in this vein.