Customer Reviews

Of Love and Other Demons

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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.

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.

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.

I remember when I read this the summer of 2001 (or perhaps 2000?) for an Advanced Placement English class. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the book and would recommend it as a great read to practically anyone. Marquez is a fantastic writer (that doesn't need to be said) and the story in "Of Love and Other Demons" is intriguing. Find a way to get your hands on a copy.

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 Cholera', nor does it include the lengthy, dense atmosphere present in 'One Hundred years of solitude'. The bones of this tale are simple. At the centre of the story is Sierva Maria, daughter of Don Ygnacio de alfaro y Duenas, Lord of Darien, and Bernarda Cabrera, wealthy Lord and Lady of a Colonial Colombian seaport. Sierva Maria leads a bizarre home life. Her father is introduced as a man who 'lives in fear of being alive' whilst her mother is an addict of violent sex, cacao and fermented honey who similarly describes herself as 'a dead woman'. As both estranged parents shun their child because they hate what they see of one another in her, Sierva Maria is essentially raised by the household slaves. Strangely it appears that the only people in the novel not enslaved to the hardship, convention and routine in society are those enslaved to slavery itself. Due to this, Sierva Maria leads a relatively happy childhood, albeit in bizzare and unconventional fashion. However, Sierva Maria's lifestyle is brought to an abrupt end when she is bitten by a rabid dog, introducing the possibility of disgrace falling upon her family. Though there is absolutely nothing to indicate she has actually contracted rabies, her lifestyle is finally noticed by higher authorities and it is believed this seemingly bizarre behaviour (mixing with African slaves) must constitute demonic possession. Hence she is delivered to the convent of Santa Clara, to the 'Pavilion of those interred in life'.
It is here that the love promised by the book's title, an emotion practically extinct in the first part of the novel where Sierva Maria's family is introduced, comes to light. Cayetano Delaura, the chief exorcist, an intellectual and promising young priest, promptly falls madly in love with the young girl.
Primarily, Marquez makes a subtle attack on religious hypocrisy, asking with this novel that if the church, an institution grounded in miracle and mystery, cannot find a way of tolerating what it does not immediately understand, how does society as a whole intend to deal with that which is unusual?
This novel is an undisputed classic, as we have come to expect from Marquez. Not only does he find time to weave a wonderful atmosphere and colourful characters during the novel's fairly short length, he also makes us think upon issues like the role and place of the family unit, childhood innocence, religion and it failings, and of course true love, 'The most terrible demon of them all'.
Hugely reccomended.

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 church and state. The editorial reviews give a good summary of the plot but there is so much more to a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. The author has an uncanny ability to draw the reader in very close to the characters lives, participating in the unfolding story, empathizing with the trials and tribulations and being an active participant in the story that is unfolding. The story is void of any plot complexities which allows the reader to become emotionally involved with the characters for a gut wrenching experience. The story reveals the relationships within a multuicultural colonial society, the mistrust of African ancestry by the church and the resulting deeper bond that is created by the suppression of beliefs. The interaction by the characters is super. When Sierva Maria is confronted by the Abbess, who represents the oppresive church in her cell, the result is full of rich imagery as the heroine takes on her captors while captive and literally all hell breaks loose. This plus her special bond with others as she sings makes the Abbess further believe that she has supernatural powers. They even ludicrously assert that she has wings. This story from the imagination of Marquez reveals the demented views of the Inquisition and the lengths it would go to to keep Christianity in the New World free from foreign traditions. Inspired by family legend and an editorial assignment to write about a burial crypt uncovered in an old convent, Marquez delivers a story not to t be forgotten. Less dense than some of his other works, this book is a good starting point or a place to reaquaint oneself with one of the best writers Latin America has produced. Recommended for anyone interested in Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Latin American literature or historical novels. Most people will find that this little book delivers a story for the ages.

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!

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 as anything else he's done.

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 America are barely imaginable. Through the majestic, fairy-tale ambiance of Columbian master, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, however, such an environment is vividly alive in all of its cruelty, dread and heartache. The epoch is the backdrop to Marquez's Of Love and Other Demons, the story of Maria de Todos los Angeles, the twelve-year old daughter of an insecure marquis and his bitter, adulterous wife. Maria escapes her dysfunctional family life by becoming culturally assimilated by her parents' African slaves. When she is bitten by a rabid dog, she is swept up in a wave of paranoia and ignorance and confined to a monastery where she awaits her exorcism. Here, she develops an almost telepathic bond with a character who readers would not initially expect to be Maria's hero. Although he is condemned for his love for Maria, this man resolutes to save her from her miserable fate, after undergoing a moral crisis. Of Love and Other Demons is the flawlessly and lushly narrated story of an unlikely knight who sets out to rescue an even more unlike damsel in distress and contests his superstitious, traditional society for the unconquerable concept of love in doing so.

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. But during the day it was amazing how continuously were coming to me all the details, and more I was thinking about, more incredible and great it appeared.