Go
Classic Search  |  Browse  |  Combination  |  Help  |  My Account
 
 

Love in the Time of Cholera

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Publishers Weekly In this chronicle of a unique love triangle, the Nobel laureate's trademark ``ironic vision and luminous evocation of South America'' persist. ``It is a fully mature novel in scope and perspective, flawlessly translated, as rich in ideas as in humanity,'' praised PW . 250,000 first printing. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Publishers Weekly The ironic vision and luminous evocation of South America that have distinguished Garcia Marquez's Nobel Prize-winning fiction since his landmark work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, persist in this turn-of-the-century chronicle of a unique love triangle. It is a fully mature novel in scope and perspective, flawlessly translated, as rich in ideas as in humanity. The illustrious and meticulous Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his proud, stately wife Fermina Daza, respectively past 80 and 70, are in the autumn of their solid marriage as the drama opens on the suicide of the doctor's chess partner. Jeremiah de Saint-Amour, a disabled photographer of children, chooses death over the indignities of old age, revealing in a letter a clandestine love affair, on the ``fringes of a closed society's prejudices.'' This scenario not only heralds Urbino's demise soon afterwhen he falls out of a mango tree in an attempt to catch an escaped parrotbut brilliantly presages the novel's central themes, which are as concerned with the renewing capacity of age as with an anatomy of love. We meet Florentino Ariza, more antihero than hero, a mock Don Juan with an undertaker's demeanor, at once pathetic, grotesque and endearing, when he seizes the memorably unseemly occasion of Urbino's funeral to reiterate to Fermina the vow of love he first uttered more than 50 years before. With the fine detailing of a Victorian novel, the narrative plunges backward in time to reenact their earlier, youthful courtship of furtive letters and glances, frustrated when Fermina, in the light of awaking maturity, realizes Florentino is an adolescent obsession, and rejects him. With his uncanny ability to unearth the extraordinary in the commonplace, Garcia Marquez smoothly interweaves Fermina's and Florentino's subsequent histories. Enmeshed in a bizarre string of affairs with ill-fated widows while vicariously conducting the liaisons of others via love poems composed on request, Florentino feverishly tries to fill the void of his unrequited passion. Meanwhile, Fermina's marriage suffers vicissitudes but endures, affirming that marital love can be as much the product of art as is romantic love. When circumstances both comic and mystical offer Fermina and Florentino a second chance, during a time in their lives that is often regarded as promising only inevitable degeneration toward death, Garcia Marquez beautifully reveals true love's soil not in the convention of marriage but in the simple, timeless rituals that are its cement. 100,000 first printing; first serial to the New Yorker; BOMC main selection. (April) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Book list The Colombian-born Nobel laureate, author of the internationally adored novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, writes an exquisite tale celebrating the limitless possibilities for finding true love.

From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Choice Stylistically halfway between the realism of No One Writes to the Colonel (CH, Apr '69) and the fantastic exuberance of One Hundred Years of Solitude (CH, Sep '70), this novel is a parody of popular romantic fiction with all its cliches and expectations. Its origin can be traced to a character's remark in Solitude, explaining her rejection of a suitor: "He says he is dying because of me, as if I were a bad case of colic." Now Garcia Marquez equates love to cholera, and characters wonder whether their physical symptoms are caused by their infatuation or by the disease. This wry humor permeates the novel, set against the cultural and sociopolitical background of a dying Caribbean city, between the late 1870s and early 1930s. The heroine, Fermina Daza, after a brief youthful epistolary romance with Florentino Ariza, marries the patrician Dr. Juvenal Urbino, pressured by her socially ambitious father. Florentino decides to wait for her--engaging in Rabelaisian sex during the interlude--and 50 years later makes her his mistress after Urbino's death. The implausible plot underlines a machista approach: Fermina is manipulated by her father, her wealthy suitor, and at the end by her lover. Although it has neither the richness and complexity of One Hundred Years of Solitude nor its larger-than-life and consistent characters, this is a tender novel about old age and hope, assertive in proposing the triumph of instinct against reason. Grossman's translation captures the rhythm and beauty of the author's prose very commendably. For university and public libraries. -J. A. Hernandez, Hood College

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

Library Journal Marquez's (One Hundred Years of Solitude) tale of romance and heartbreak spans decades. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall hopelessly in love in their youth, but when Fermina forsakes Florentino's love to marry a wealthy doctor, he is anything but dissuaded. He spends a lifetime waiting for her; no woman could ever fill her place in his heart. Romance is the only thing that he can live for, and as long as Fermina lives, even with another man, his heart will keep beating in the hope that he can win her back. This story of unrequited love is unsurpassed in its eloquence, tragedy, and redemption and beautifully read by Armando Duran, whose strong voice does an excellent job with the Spanish names and language. VERDICT A wonderful classic for fans of narrative and historical literature. ["This is a compelling exploration of the myths we make of love. Highly recommended," read the review of the Knopf hc, LJ 3/15/88.]-Erin Cataldi, Johnson Cty. P.L., Franklin, IN (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Library Journal While delivering a message to her father, Florentino Ariza spots the barely pubescent Fermina Daza and immediately falls in love. What follows is the story of a passion that extends over 50 years, as Fermina is courted solely by letter, decisively rejects her suitor when he first speaks, and then joins the urbane Dr. Juvenal Urbino, much above her station, in a marriage initially loveless but ultimately remarkable in its strength. Florentino remains faithful in his fashion; paralleling the tale of the marriage is that of his numerous liaisons, all ultimately without the depth of love he again declares at Urbino's death. In substance and style not as fantastical, as mythologizing, as the previous works, this is a compelling exploration of the myths we make of love. Highly recommended. Barbara Hoffert, ``Library Journal'' (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.