Love in the time of cholera

Pre Script : May become a very long post.


'Love stories. They make sense in bits and pieces, sometimes the whole never does. Love is like that.' - Someone on my twitter time line who has a way with words and life.


Ok. First things first. I don't even know why I picked and then decided to buy this book. On a landmark trip I had almost bought 100 years of solitude, but then because of a self imposed intervention did not buy it. Nonetheless I think it was destined (;)) that I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's cholera (here after will be referred by the same name) first! Done with the story behind the book!


Love is a topic of personal disposition. To me my parents', friends' love makes perfect sense to me. Of course the husband-wife kind of love which involves a lot of domestication is something I have not experienced so cannot say much except from what I have observed. And that is why when I read the above quoted line, it again rang a bell and made perfect sense to me. (needless to say it shamelessly got re-tweeted)


Anywho, the book opened with the strangest and most evocative line I have read  'The smell of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love'. That moment on it was a journey of such and more stranger and beautiful lines. I have always found detailing of human emotions wondrous. And to imagine that I was reading a translation!!


When a proud, haughty Fermina Daza rejected the hopeless innocent love of Florentino Ariza,and instead settled for a seemingly perfect (wealth, looks, reputation and education wise) man Dr. Juvenal Urbino, I did not hate her. Nor did I feel instant sympathy for Ariza. Such was the book. It din't give me a central feeling which I could hold on to (the way Rowling did and we all still feel a certain empathy for Harry). He just took these people, their lives, their characters and their relationships with different people and looked at them as an observer. Of course I did gradually feel that Ariza's unrequited love gets fulfilled. And that's not because Fermina was unhappy or Urbino was a bad guy or Ariza himself was suffering. They were just themselves. Living life through disappointments and disillusionment trying to create better illusions for themselves.


These very scandalous (not in a perverse way) characters (and many other as well) were on a quest for love, which each explored in his/her own way, as fate permitted. And by the end of it, it all felt very peaceful and calm. There was no clamor of passion, hope or disillusion. Also the book had a very amusing and funny undertone. As if it knew what not to take seriously ;-)
[In a rather funny way, Ariza'a mother compares the symptoms of love of a young Florentino to Cholera. And there after keeps referring to it 'that ailment he once caught and never got rid of'.]


And since the original book is in spanish, and I read a translation, I hope it was worth it. Because, love stories don't need a language in the end ;)


Ok slight afterthought. While reading any book I imagine a movie being made on it (for most of them!). Somehow for me it was very difficult to imagine these people in a movie. And then I googled the movie which was made in 2007 based on the book and read Ebert uncle's synopsis of it and realized how true it is what he has said!
[For those who did not click the link, he says 'I'm wondering, as I started by saying, if what makes Garcia Marquez so great a writer is his work's insistence on being read, not seen'.]


Highly recommend. And oh you will love the carribbean of the colonial times! :)


~nightflier


P.S. Is it me or the post feels disjointed ? Guess its Marquez's work's insistence on being read, not being written about :-)
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