Review: Love in Time of Cholera

Paperback: 368 pages

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs–yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.

Mocha Girl Shayla’s review:  ARGHHH! I took the time to write this review, but I guess I took to long because it didn’t take.
Anyway, here is the short version. I decided to take a break from Garcia Marquez because I read Chronicle of a Death Fortold and thought it was “eh” after I read 100 Years of Solitude which I really liked. Love in the time of Cholera makes me like GGM again.  The book is wonderfully descriptive and gave me a clear understanding of all the characters.  No one in this book escapes the impact of love, or for that matter cholera, but they all view and experience love in a different manner.  Florentino despite taking many short-term and long-term lovers and finding love with them, he maintains a love for Fermina Daza that is deep and different, albeit based on the adolescent “love”(?) of many decades ago.   This wasn’t a sappy idealized love story, but one that felt real. There is love, obsession, marriage, adultery, death, reconciliatio  I picked up the book. I put it down. I read a few pages. I put it down again (although I was taken by the first sentence: “..the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love”). But I pushed through which ultimately wasnt half the struggle I anticipated. As soon as Florentino appears after Dr Urbino’s death and declares his love once more for Fermina (“Femina…I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love”), I got into it! Florentino is beyond the extreme of a hopeless romantic and there were times when I rolled my eyes at him. He was pretty intense lol. Yet I liked the book. It’s fascinating how a story translated in English sustained me and the pages just turned and turned within my weekend. To a certain extent some things reminded me of “The Count of Monte Cristo” and even “Great Expectations”, also Fermina somehow reminded me of Anna in “Anna Karenina”. Nevertheless, the story stands for itself and forces you to stop and consider: How long are you willing to wait for love? Would you persist in the face of adversity and even rejection? I would categorize this book as a classic love story. I loved it!n and aging and not all in that order, with the troubles of Latin America, the Magdelena River and cholera providing an interesting back drop.

Mocha Girl Alana’s review:  I picked up the book. I put it down. I read a few pages. I put it down again (although I was taken by the first sentence: “..the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love”). But I pushed through which ultimately wasnt half the struggle I anticipated. As soon as Florentino appears after Dr Urbino’s death and declares his love once more for Fermina (“Femina…I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love”), I got into it! Florentino is beyond the extreme of a hopeless romantic and there were times when I rolled my eyes at him. He was pretty intense lol. Yet I liked the book. It’s fascinating how a story translated in English sustained me and the pages just turned and turned within my weekend. To a certain extent some things reminded me of “The Count of Monte Cristo” and even “Great Expectations”, also Fermina somehow reminded me of Anna in “Anna Karenina”. Nevertheless, the story stands for itself and forces you to stop and consider: How long are you willing to wait for love? Would you persist in the face of adversity and even rejection? I would categorize this book as a classic love story. I loved it!

Mocha Girl Hodan’s review:  I loved this book and it made me want to believe in love(nah!). The best of Gabriel Garcia-this tale of heartbreak,lose and love is classic. The story is as hot as the Caribbean climate and it reminds me of an old Arabic poetic verse that translates roughly to (what is love but to the first lover) which is true, we all remember the first person that knocked on doors of our hearts whether in adolescence or later on in college .
The main character Fermina Daza is the love interest of Florentino Ariza (my favorite) he’s love for her is bold,passionate and unfortunately young too young.
Simply put, the story doesn’t go as planned and Fermina realizes under pressure from her father that love is not enough, that she needs security both financial and emotional(in my opinion i think she feared the thing she needed the most)and erroneously she marries an older doctor who is stable, smart and organized. Our hero Florentino carries the love of his youth to adulthood to old-age and through the change in time that romance is never changed. He realizes that the reason Fermina left him because of his naïveté(she’s his first-awww)thus he goes and transforms himself to a modern day Casanova and writes his exploits in black notebooks as i remember. Nevertheless, what is meant to be will always be in terms of love stories and I won’t say more You should read it for yourself. I just have to quote Paulo here “All love stories are the same”