Who Would Like This Book:
If you love lush, poetic writing and stories that sweep across decades, this is a book for you. Gabriel Garcia Marquez creates a vivid world full of longing, obsession, and all the messiness of love - romantic and otherwise. The setting - evocative, sultry, and alive with detail - draws you into Caribbean Colombia at the turn of the 20th century. This is perfect for readers who appreciate complex characters, subtle magical realism, meditations on aging, or the intricate dance between passion and companionship. Fans of literary fiction, magical realism, or novels that explore the bittersweet evolution of relationships over time will find much to savor here.
Who May Not Like This Book:
Some readers struggle with the slow pacing, dense prose, and minimal dialogue - even finding the book meandering or overly indulgent. If you need action-packed plots, highly likable main characters, or get uncomfortable when protagonists behave badly, this might frustrate you. Florentino, in particular, is a polarizing figure - his obsessive love and questionable choices are off-putting to some, and for many, the book’s handling of sensitive topics (like age-gap relationships or consent) can feel deeply problematic. If you’re sensitive to themes of misogyny or prefer your romances free from moral ambiguity, this one might not be your cup of tea.
About:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'Love in the Time of Cholera' is a tale of enduring love and obsession, following the lives of three main characters - Fermina Daza, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, and Florentino Ariza. The story delves into themes of love, patience, and longing, set against the backdrop of coastal Colombia at the turn of the 20th century. The narrative explores the complexities of relationships, the impact of time on memories and emotions, and the various forms that love can take.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Triggers include themes of sexual abuse, pedophilia, unrequited love, and misogynistic portrayals.
Has Romance?
The book contains an undeniably high presence of romance, exploring various facets of love over decades.
From The Publisher:
A poignant meditation on the nature of desire, and the enduring power of love, Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera is translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman in Penguin Modern Classics.
Florentino Ariza is a hopeless romantic who falls passionately for the beautiful Fermina Daza, but finds his love tragically rejected. Instead Fermina marriesdistinguished doctor Juvenal Urbino, while Florentino can only wait silently for her. He can never forget his first and only true love. Then, fifty-one years, nine months and four days later, Fermina's husband dies unexpectedly. At last Florentino has another chance to declare his feelings and discover if a passion that has endured for half a century will remain unrequited, in a rich, fantastical and humane celebration of love in all its many forms.
Gabriel García Márquez (b. 1928) was born in Aracataca, Colombia. He is the author of several novels, including Leaf Storm (1955), One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) and The General in His Labyrinth (1989). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
If you enjoyed Love in the Time of Cholera, you might like Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.
'The nearest thing to sensual pleasure prose can offer'
Daily Telegraph
'An amazing celebration of the many kinds of love between men and women... among Márquez's best fiction'
The Times
'The greatest luxury ... is the eerie, entirely convincing suspension of the laws of reality ... the agelessness of the human story as told by one of this century's most evocative writers'
Anne Tyler, author of The Accidental Tourist
Ratings (155)
Incredible (25) | |
Loved It (61) | |
Liked It (35) | |
It Was OK (13) | |
Did Not Like (14) | |
Hated It (7) |
Reader Stats (319):
Read It (163) | |
Currently Reading (1) | |
Want To Read (119) | |
Did Not Finish (8) | |
Not Interested (28) |
4 comment(s)
I think the author's writing is beautiful but the book... not so much.
I did not like it at all for several reasons. The first being the same reason I hated Wuthering Heights: obsession disguised as love. But this also had the additional cavalier discussions of rape and pedophilia. I don’t care about when it was written. It sucks.
***1.0***
I didn't get It...
I am confused with the names. I am confused with the timeline.
Not my cup of tea.
★★★★★
Like cholera (or coronavirus), Márquez has shown us that lovesickness is a plague of its own. Though I preferred One Hundred Years of Soluitude, Love in the Time of Cholera is a superbly powerful love story. A copy of the book was given to me years ago and the recommendation to finally read it couldn't have come at a more opportune time. It has helped to beguile some of the time I'm stuck indoors and I'm pleased to have spent part of it in Márquez's world of longing and magic.
There is so much to be said for this classic. For now, a few of my favorite passages:
“He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”
“She was a ghost in a strange house that overnight had become immense and solitary and through which she wandered without purpose, asking herself in anguish which of them was deader: the man who had died or the woman he had left behind.”
“She would defend herself, saying that love, no matter what else it might be, was a natural talent. She would say: You are either born knowing how, or you never know.”
“Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability.”
What can you read after
Love in the Time of Cholera?
About the Author:
Gabriel García Márquez was born in 1927 near Aracataca, Colombia. He is the author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, and Living to Tell the Tale, among other works of fiction and non-fiction. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. He lives in Mexico City.
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