Love in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera- Gabriel García Márquez

How I found this book: It’s mentioned by every chic-lit person I know who says, “OH MY GOD, it’s SUCH a great book.” But really my friend Megan convinced me because she was curious as well.

Setting: 19th century-20th century, I believe it is supposed to be Columbia.

Main Characters:

Florentino Ariza: a romantic youth who loves poetry and Fermina Diaz, he has an idealistic conceptualization of love. He falls for Fermina when they are both young, but when she marries another, he spends the rest of his adult life reserving his heart for her, while engaging in one love affair after another. He is, in a twisted sense, carrying on the ideals of ‘chivalric love’, bearing out the sincerity of his love, even if he is a cad.

Fermina Daza: as a young girl she falls in love with Florentino Ariza, attracted by his romantic ardor. She begins wonder about the true nature of their romance, and rejects Florentino to marry the more established Juvenal, and helps to create a long marriage.

Juvenal Urbino: Fermina’s husband, ten years her senior, he is a well-respected and established doctor who is devoted to the notion of eradicating cholera. He is a good husband to Fermina for the most part. The book opens with his death, but as you flashback you see the rich and idealistic Juvenal, his nobel aspirations, and the relationship he has with Fermina.


Plot: Juvenal Urbino discovers after the death of one of his close friends that he had been having a secret affair with a woman he loved for years. For whatever reason this unsettles the venerable doctor, who dies himself just days later in an accident. This leaves his wife of many years, Fermina, now widowed. But after his funeral her former lover, Florentino, arrives to state he ahs always loved her. Angry, she kicks him out, but this starts a flashback series where we see a young, poetic Florentino wooing a teenaged Fermina. Like most chivalric romances, most of this one is from a far, with many romantic promises. But reality finally hits Fermina, who eventually marries the far more certain and stable Juvenal, with whom she builds a life. He too has his own dreams and ambitions like Florentino, and seems to offer Fermina a good life. Florentino, wounded that the woman he loved chose another vows to never love another woman till he dies unless he can have Fermina. This doesn't stop the passionate Florentino from taking on hundreds of lovers, but his heart remains only for Fermina. In the end, it is only after Juvenal's death that the two rekindle their friendship and later their love for one another, now shaped and changed by 50 years of seperation.

Themes:

Romantic vs. Steadfast love: Believe it or not there is a difference between romantic, all-consuming passion and steadfast love. I think on many levels Marquez shows us this notion of steadfast love, both in the fact that after all these years Florentino still loves Fermina, and in Fermina and Juvenal's devotion to each other despite the hardships of marriage and life. It differs markedly from the all-consuming love that Florentino and Fermina first display for each other, or that Florentino wallows in as a spurned man. That love is almost paralytic and causes people to act rashly or without thinking. With age it seems also comes wisdom, as the steadfast sort of love displayed by the characters comes only with much experience. While they are markedly different in the forms they take, they seem to be much more stable and less disasterous than the more romantic passions displayed in their youths, particularly Fermina and Florentino.

Scientific vs. Romantic: This is best displayed between Juvenal and Florentino, the two loves of Fermina's life, and seem to display the two sides of her own nature. Juvenal is a man of science, out to cure his nation of cholera if he can, who uses this as the standard by which he can measure his life. Florentino is passionate and often lost in fancies. His entire life is run by the way he feels at that exact moment. The two are opposites in many ways, and Fermina stands in between the two, anchoring them both. She both softens Juvenal and grounds Florentino. Perhaps that is why she can find love with both men so equally.

Cholera: Both literally and metaphorically this disease is all consuming. It hits the country with regularity taking many with it. It is the consuming passion of Juvenal, who wishes to stomp it out. And love in this book can often be much like it, burst into life and ravage everything, sweeping all up in its path.


Every book sucks somewhere: I have to admit it...I didn't get this book. I know it's won prizes, I know people LOVE it. I didn't get it. Perhaps because of the translation from Spanish to English it loses something in translation. Perhaps it's just the style, long, drug out, heavily metaphorical, and thick to read. At the time I read the book, I had just gotten back from Italy, and was tired of having to think, so the style might just have hit me at the wrong time. But

I didn't appreciate Florentino, I saw him as nothing more than a cad who bewailed how he loved Fermina alone, and then slept with anything that moved. Maybe it's just me, but a part of me wanted to beat him like a red-headed stepchild, (I phrase I can get away with saying as I am both red-headed and a stepchild, but rarely ever beat). Honestly, how silly and immature is acting like that? I think at least by the end he had learned most of his lessons, but the scene at Juvenal's funeral was, at best, inappropriate.

What did I like: While the story seems to climax with Fermina and Florentino, the actual love story I empathized with was Juvenals. Sure, perhaps he wasn't as romantic, and he did cheat on her once, but it seemed to be such a more real, solid, tangible thing to me. Something that is much more comfortable than what Florentino offered.

How would I rate this wormy book: I'd rate this a LITTLE worm. I was so not enthralled with this book, a bit disappointing since I had heard rave reviews about it. It held little interest for me. I won't say it's a horrible book, especially not a prize winning one, but it wasn't really all that great either. It was a rather big disappointment.