Customer Reviews

Love in the Time of Cholera (Oprah's Book Club)

5 star:		(164)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This book is one of the most beautiful I have ever read. Every page is like poetry.

Takes patience at first of course, but definitely worth it.

In the book club I was in at the time, I was one of only two people who actually read the whole thing. It's a bit of a slow read. Maybe I'll try it again sometime and see if it gets any better the second time around. Or maybe I already donated it. Not sure.

I love this book. Its an amazing love story in a great colonial setting. The writing always as spected from Gabriel García Maquez.

If you're one for a good story, such as ones found in WATER FOR ELEPHANTS or the ever-popular A TOUR OF SOUTHERN HOMES AND GARDENS, then LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA will be just the thing for you. A word of warning, though, as Marquez's novel will not immediately appeal to you if you're not prepared for the unusual style and mixture of realism and magic. For some this can be jarring. Personally, I found it refreshing. Set in the caribbean, this story shows us the many facets that love can take, and reveals to us the human heart with all its hope and despair. Unlike ONE HUNDRED YEARS by Marquez, this is a much shorter and less complicated book. If you're new to this author, this would be the book to start with. Would also recommend the novel KITE RUNNER if you haven't read that one yet.

Marquez has a way with words like no other writer. And a way with a plot. Now, you're not going to zip right through this book in one night, and it is not a short read by any means, but what you put into it, you get out.

This is a timeless epic story that is as applicable today as it was when it was written. Set in the Caribbean in the mid-nineteenth century the book explores the many faces of love, or not. It's not surprising that today so many historical novels are making their way to the fore. PILLARS OF THE EARTH is another one---very long and historical----that reminds me of LOVE IN THE TIME. Would also recommend the novels KITE RUNNER and MIDDLESEX for other great reads.

Love, death, sex, sorrow, and illusion are the major components of this great novel. By reading the title, one might think: what in the world does love have to do with cholera? Sometimes, we love someone so much that it can make us sick.

The story begins with a suicide. This event will catch your attention right away and never let go until the last page of the novel. There is a sort of mystery that surrounds his death. Here is when we first see the complications of love and the death that accompanies it. It is said that the best reason to die, is for love. This novel deeply examines the nature of love and its different levels. As in life, there is one person who loves with all their heart and then there is another person who only seems to play with the other person's emotions. There are also people who love blindly. They are only in love with the illusion they have made in their heads of a person. They may only see what they want to see.

This book also raises the question of whether sex can bring about love. Today in our society there are many people who have many sex partners without any real feeling towards them. To me, people who have multiple sex partners are dirty and have no morals. After reading Love in the Time of Cholera I have gotten a new point of view. There are some people like in the novel who are so madly in love with people who they cannot have. This causes some to find affection elsewhere. The moments when they are with another person they forget about their true love and make the pain more bearable.

The way in which the story is told is another element that makes this book so great. The novel begins in the middle of the story, the turning point.. Then it goes into the past and gives you the history of the people and how they end up in the places in which we found them at the beginning of the novel. Then it goes to back to where the beginning had left off. This is a very effecting way of writing because it makes the reader want to keep reading to find out what happens to the two lovers.

The only complaints I would have about the book would be the amounts of description that I feel were not necessary for the telling of the story. The novel also made the characters annoying at times because they were so love sick, you wanted them to just get over it. Aside from these small drawbacks, the novel was a masterpiece.

Although this novel evokes many thoughts about the illusions of love and the sorrows it brings it does so in a touching and comical way. From Dr. Urbino spraying his urine all over the seat to the sexual quirks of Florentino's lovers, the novel brings a smile to your face.

I originally bought this book after watching the movie Serendipity. And then heard everyone say how great a love story it is. I was just so dissapointed. This book is really boring. Yes, it probably is quite romantic, as in true love never dies, bla bla bla. But im sorry, i really dont see what the fuss is all about. Its just too slow, too detailed, and i was actually relieved when i was done with it.

"LOVE IN TIME OF CHOLERA"
By Gabriel García Márquez

Can we defined what it is love? How many kinds of love there are? When we know we
are in love, Can we know it? When we know is just something transitory? How we know
this is the right person to marry? These are some of the themes that Gabriel García
Márquez portrays in this interesting novel.

This book shows that love is not always perfect and the illness of cholera are the same
that the illness of love. This novel shows us that love can come unexpected and the same
time can change very quickly. Love is not constant and sometimes changes people's live.
Love can do powerful things and this is reflected in Florentino Ariza who loved Fermina
Daza for more that fifty years.

This novel shows the large definition of love and one kind of love that we see is the love
between Fermina Daza and her husband, Dr, Urbino. At first neither of them are in love
but with time they begin to love each other "he was aware that he did not love her"(159)
" but as she kissed him for the first time he was sur e there would be no obstacle to their
inventing true love". (159) With the passing of the years, when they were old, the love
changed to a more mature defition of love.

This is an awesome book with unexpected ending. I recommend this novel and after you
read it is going to change the way you see love.

A simple story full of well-presented details, with sound, smell, colours and texture. Even you don`t believe in love, it worth the time and effort to go through it.
I can`t help but comparing Tomas of Unbearable lightness of being with Florentino. Tomas escape love in order to stay with lightness but at the end of his life he can`t get rid of Tereza; Florentino refrain himself from loving other for he believes his love is only for Fermina. They have slept with hundreds of women, good or bad, just for short-lived love and sex, and believe that fidelity is nothing to do with causal sex. I think it is a fantasy of man: The fate/destiny of a man is to have a woman who is his crowned goddness for spiritual love, and hundreds of sex mates for fullfiling of physical needs.
I just can`t accept Florentino, at his 76, fall in 'love' with a little girl only 14 years old and is under his guidance.
There are so many types of love in this book that sometimes you have to stop a while and ask yourself: Is it love? What is love?
I enjoy the book very much though in the middle of it the come and go of Florentino`s lovers are a bit bore and excessive. As a woman, sometimes I can`t quite follow Fermina`s thought because most of the women will not react like her did. She is a crowned goddess created by the author.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera is an epic love story, notable as much for its romanticism as for its unflinching gaze towards the vagaries of love's many faces. For those who scoff at or discard the literary love story, paradoxically, this is the book for you. Set in the seductive Caribbean during the mid-nineteenth century, Marquez's novel explores love in all its manifestations, from the vertigo of idolatry to the dirty dishes of marriage, and his portraits resonate exquisitely for anyone who has nursed this human inkling. Marquez never cheapens love nor falsifies it; on the contrary, he sees love's glory, or lack thereof, with an unerring eye. His portrait of marriage between his two protagonists, Dr. Juvenal Urbino and Fermina Daza, includes such observations such as "The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast." Interestingly, Marquez reveals an astute viewpoint towards the female predicament in marriage: Fermina Daza realizes she is nothing more to her husband than "a deluxe servant;" she feels she is trapped in his "holy service." Nor is Marquez oblivious to the bland atrocities committed by a husband: Dr. Juvenal Urbino proclaims meals prepared "without love;" he never deigns to pick anything up, turn out a light, or close a door. Marquez is a man who observes without bias the diurnal stalemate of a marriage lived daily. He concludes that "nothing in this world was more difficult than love." Marquez does not limit himself to the domestic pitfalls of marriage. Florentino Ariza, another man who figures prominently in this incognito Caribbean city, has loved Fermina Daza inexorably for fifty-three years, seven months, and eleven days. His love is fervent and never falters. Yet, before one chalks his devotion to an unlikely romanticism, the love Florentino Ariza fosters towards Fermina Daza is not idealized. Notwithstanding the hundreds of women he frenetically possesses during his admirable wait for Fermina Daza's widowhood, he is hardly a hero of unblemished character. At a very advanced age, he exploits his position as guardian of a 14-year old girl for physical love. Ultimately, when Florentino Ariza is granted the holy audience of Fermina Daza, he abandons the girl, who commits suicide. Towards the novel's conclusion, Florentino Ariza is very old, a victim of festering bed sores and unfettered constipation. Marquez's omniscient eye (or nose) describes the stench of the two elderly lovers as a "henhouse." Despite, or perhaps because of, these prosaic details, the reader does not doubt the authenticity of the feelings presented. Love, in Marquez's lush, grand novel, is made truer because of, not despite, its human frailties. Would also recommend the book ------THE WOMAN WHO CUT OFF HER LEG by Slavin for a FUNNY read that's nothing like this one.