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Of Love and Other Demons
  
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Of Love and Other Demons [Audiobook] (Audio Cassette)

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)

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From Publishers Weekly

The incantatory power of Garcia Marquez's prose is as potent as ever in this mesmerizing story inspired by an amazing event he witnessed almost 50 years ago, as a journalist observing the transfer of burial remains from the crypt of an old convent. When one tomb was opened, "a stream of living hair the intense color of copper spilled out." More than 22 meters in length, it was attached to the skull of a young girl whose body had been interred for 200 years. Remembering his grandmother's tales of a 12-year-old marquise who had died of rabies from a dog bite, Garcia Marquez has imagined the girl's life and the circumstances of her death. As usual, the atmosphere is colored by magical realism: dreams and portents, inexplicable, miraculous events. The offspring of a melancholy, ineffectual marquis and a mother yoked to "insatiable vices," Sierva Maria is raised by the family's West Indian slaves, who teach her the Yoruban language and magical practices. She is bitten by a rabid dog but shows no real symptoms; the local bishop, however, decides she is possessed by demons and orders her incarcerated in a convent where she will be exorcised by his gentle librarian, Father Delaura. But Delaura becomes possessed, too?by his love for this suffering child three decades his junior. Garcia Marquez describes the physical tortures inflicted on Sierva Maria as graphically as he does the rapturous?but chaste?love between the innocent, terrified girl and her confessor. A Jewish-Portuguese doctor says that "killing her would have been more Christian than burying her alive." This tragic tale is in essence an outcry against intolerance and bigotry and an indictment of a degraded Church that used its power with narrow-minded cruelty. In the end, the power of love transcends the earthly sphere.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal

In this new novel, already available here in Spanish (see review in "En Espa?ol," p. 77), a priest becomes passionately attached to a girl dying of rabies.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Customer Reviews

45 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (45 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars Dark and Atmospheric, Beautiful Prose, Feb 12 2004
This review is from: Of Love And Other Demons (Paperback)
OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS is part fantasy, part reality, with some magical realism included, but it is totally Gabriel Garcia Marquez and it is one of my favorites.

Unlike Garcia Marquez's masterpiece, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE and the funny and poignant LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA, OFLOVE AND OTHER DEMONS contains no real wit and is wholly dark and gloomy and filled with terror. The recipient of that terror is the book's protagonist, Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles, an aristocratic young girl in an unnamed Latin American port city.

Sierva Maria is the only child of Don Ygnacio de Alfaro y Duenas and Bernarda Cabrera. Both mother and father are terrible parents. Don Ygnacio spends his time cowering from life in a hammock in his garden, while his wife, who is addicted to cacao and fermented honey, strolls through the house naked, mourning the end of her wild affair with a slave named Judas Iscariote. Both Don Ygnacio and Bernarda are wholly unlikable, though Don Ygnacio does manage to redeem himself somewhat in the end. Because of her parents lack of availability, Sierva Maria spends her time with the black slaves that work on her father's plantation and, as a result, she is much more African in her outlook than she is Spanish.

One could envision Sierva Maria living out her days happily with the slaves, forgotten by both mother and father. The incident that drives the plot of this book, and the one that alters the course of Sierva Maria's life, however, is a bite on the ankle by a dog suspected of having rabies. Even though it's quite clear that the dog was not rabid, Don Ygnacio, on the advice of the local bishop, takes his daughter to a convent and decides that she much be exorcised of the demons that have, of course, come to possess her with the bite of the dog.

Once Don Ygnacio makes the decision to exorcise the demons from his daughter's life, a priest named Cayetano Delaura enters the picture and promptly falls in love with Sierva Maria, primarily because of her lush, coppery hair. Father Delaura greatly opposes Sierva Maria's familiarity with the African slaves, but it is a Jewish doctor, Abrenuncio de Sa Pereira Cao who opposes Father Delaura. Abrenuncio knows Sierva Maria hasn't been infected with rabies, but he has his hands full attempting to convince Don Ygnacio and the abbess of the convent in which Sierva Maria has become a prisoner.

The prose in this dark book is gorgeous, as beautiful as that in ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE even if it does lack the wit. It doesn't really matter because wit isn't needed in this story. The prose is lush, gorgeous, magical, limpid, luminous and poetic. It provides a perfect counterpoint to the harrowing story it tells.

OF LOVE AND OTHER DEMONS many not be Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpiece, but it is certainly one of the best books ever written. I would definitely recommend this book to everyone and it is certainly a good place to begin if you're a first time reader of Garcia Marquez.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Pure, lush, fantasy, boiling over..., Jan 29 2004
By Campbell Roark "tri-zeta" (from under the floorboards and through the woods...) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Of Love And Other Demons (Paperback)
I couldn't put this down, read it in one afternoon on a bench by the bay. Marquez has created a world entirely of his own, this isn't Columbia in the 17th Century, nor is it some dreamscape stalked by nightmarish figures. This is a tale of robust power, dealing with lust, love, sickness, transgression, madness, faith, frailty, flesh and loss. In this world presented to us, each of them swirl together until you can't distinguish them from each other. The lives of the people in the pages: the rotting, resigned father; the impassioned atheist doctor; the brilliant, doomed and tormented priest; the deluded sex-crazed mother; the drooping slaves; the vindictive nuns... and at the heart- the crimson-haired little girl as a primal force of nature- incomprehensible, vibrant, fierce... A resounding laugh in the faces of the Stoics who intoned- "Live According to Nature." The writing bursts with energy, with poetry, with blood and bile and pale venom- you can almost smell the pages sweat. Few books evoke so much with so little (it's very short, after all). This is a fine novel, an abundant and wretched dream that will possess you for as long as you immerse yourself in it.
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5.0 out of 5 stars What a Splendid book, Nov 28 2003
By Andrew G. Morkos "the western ascetic a_morko... (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Of Love And Other Demons (Paperback)
No one can fuse logic and magic like marquez. In "Of love and other demons", a beautifully lush and colourful book, marquez seeks to examine the blured relationship between love and logic.

It is about a young girl who is bitten by a rabid dog on her birthday. Subsequently, after failed attempts to cure her, she is suspected of infact being possessed. As a measure, she is sent to a nearby convent, and Priest Delaura (relatively young but dynamic) is sent to take charge of this matter. However, he falls deeply in love with her, and comes to believe that she is infact not at all possessed. He is a voice of reason, in an otherwise ignorant and paranoid world.

This may sound dry on one level, but that is what makes marquez such a phenomenon. The prose is bursting with life. You read as if mesmerised by all the dreams, motivations and love. It is a passionate love story, but also "tragic" in a sense. MArquez portrays love as a demon of sorts, in that it can take over a seemingly controlled individual (in the case of Delaura) much like demonic possession. Love is undeniably and incomparably fulfilling, yet heart breaking all at once. Read this short parable, and be enchanted by its utter beauty.

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 		 Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Back in the Day...
I remember when I read this the summer of 2001 (or perhaps 2000?) for an Advanced Placement English class. Read more
Published on Oct 8 2003 by M. H. Jordan

5.0 out of 5 stars Once again a classic.
Whilst 'Of Love and other Demons' deals with an extraordinarily driven yet inherently sad love story, it includes none of the subtle, gentle comedy of 'Love in the Time of... Read more
Published on Sep 18 2002 by Reverend_Maynard

2.0 out of 5 stars Marginally magical, rarely realistic
Yes, this book probably lost a star or so being read by me in translation. There's good reason - at times, the English version of the Spanish text feels like a moderately-paced... Read more
Published on Aug 23 2002 by Yan Timanovsky

5.0 out of 5 stars An unforgetable novelette
An absolutely incredible short book that takes you into a world of mystery, love,cruelty, superstition and relationships in the colonial period of Latin America between the... Read more
Published on Aug 21 2002 by Enrique Torres

5.0 out of 5 stars Really sad and touching
I don't know Spanish, so i had to read it as a translation. The novel is wonderful, love is wonderful. The ending is sad, but that's how iot always happens. Read it!
Published on Jan 18 2002 by Audrius Alkauskas

5.0 out of 5 stars An easy introduction to Marquez
If you've never read Marquez and you want an easy introduction, this is the book for you. It's short, easier to read than some of his stuff, and as total an aesthetic experience... Read more
Published on Jan 11 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars Story of an unlikely knight and an even more unlikey damsel
In this liberal era of separation of church and state, compassionate parenting and victim's rights, many situations faced in a society as rigid and superstitious as colonial South... Read more
Published on Dec 19 2001 by P. Nicholas Keppler

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
It's a great book. I read it through a single evening, and I couldn't get asleep till I finished it. Yes, I wasn't able to say too much about it to my friend next morning. Read more
Published on Oct 22 2001 by L. Varlan

5.0 out of 5 stars Exotic, different, MARVELOUS
I have to admit it, I am a Garcia Marquez fan, and therefore my opinion may be biased, still, I have to say I simply loved this book. Read more
Published on Oct 15 2001 by E. Villarreal

5.0 out of 5 stars My first review
I have never written a review in these type of venues, as I never find them useful. Books are a matter of taste and liking them depends much on your depth of knowledge and... Read more
Published on Sep 24 2001

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