Chasing The Muse
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Love in the Time of Cholera

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Love in the Time of Cholera

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

reviewed by Rich Le Cropane

For those of you who prefer to cut to the chase, here it is: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera is a bloody brilliant book. Put down the coffee, the chicken leg, or whatever it is you have in your reading hand and get hold of a copy. Right now. Seriously.

As the book's title suggests, Garcia Marquez, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, has written a novel about love. But this is no ordinary romance--set in an unnamed country along the Caribbean coast of South America at the turn of the last century, this is a story of unrequited love spanning almost sixty years. It's the story of Fermina Daza and the two men who love her: Dr. Juvenal Urbino (who marries her), and Florentino Ariza (who does not). The latter's love remains strong, however, and when he chooses to redeclare his devotion to Fermina at her husband's funeral, she unceremoniously orders him from her house.

Florentino's untimely act, and Fermina's reaction to it, serve as the jumping off point for the rest of the book, as Garcia Marquez tells us the story of the previous sixty years with the seemingly effortless grace of a master storyteller. He shows us how Florentino courts Fermina, and almost wins her, only to be forcibly separated from her. Even after Fermina marries Dr. Urbino, the threads of their lives are still twisted together as Fermina raises her children, her husband becomes an eminent Professor of Medicine and patron of the arts, and Florentino rises to become a business tycoon.

And, of course, there is the cholera. Dr. Urbino spends much of his life fighting the disease that plagues his city and country, and it touches the lives of all the characters in this book. But, as the story winds down and approaches its oddly satisfying non-ending, one wonders if the disease in the title isn't really one of the heart.

Love in the Time of Cholera was originally written in Spanish, but Garcia Marquez's work is still powerfully moving in its English translation--you'll want to take time with this one. Quarantine flag optional.

If you'd like to purchase Love in the Time of Cholera, click on the Buy From Amazon button at the top left of this page. You'll get great service, and you'll support the NWG.

Rich Le Cropane is a repurposed Navy brat who makes his living writing computer software. While he has dabbled in writing for human consumption since his teens, he began to develop his craft in earnest only after his wife suggested that he "shut up and start typing, already." When he's not bossing computers around, he writes short stories and light verse, and rearranges the outlines of two novels he has in the works. Rich lives in Oswego with his very understanding wife and a brace of uppity cats.