Love in the Time of Cholera

Book Description

In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermino 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.

With humorous sagacity and consummate craft, García Márquez traces an exceptional half-century story of unrequited love. Though it seems never to be conveniently contained, love flows through the novel in many wonderful guises--joyful, melancholy, enriching, ever surprising.

Customer Reviews:

The Ageless Tale of Unrequited Love.......2007-10-05

This story is tragically beautiful and Gabriel García Marquez is a master at creating flawless prose. After young love is broken apart by a well meaning father trying to protect his daughter's status, her starry-eyed suitor pines over her for half a century. Meanwhile, she marries, and he goes on to have numerous lovers in an attempt to fill the void she left but doesn't let any of them penetrate him emotionally. When her husband dies, he returns to declare his love for her.

Throughout "Love in the Time of Cholera" I was reminded that a decision made by one person doesn't just affect that person, it rockets off in all directions and inflicts many. The story gives one hope that love is timeless--probably less so in real life. It's almost too much to believe that reuniting after 50 years makes up for all the pain and agony of missing your one true love. Gabriel García Marquez's literature is a pleasure to read and in the most perfect form. "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is another one of his that is a must read.

Greatest love story.......2007-09-30

I have always enjoyed Marquez's work (I encountered The General in His Labyrinth in a bookstore in Guatemala and recently read his marvelous small work on aging, Memories of My Melancholy Whores), but for some reason had never read what many consider his greatest work, Love in a Time of Cholera. I have just completed it, and it is one of the finest books I have read in my 60+ years of reading. It is a complex luminous tale of unexpected magic, and the most wonderful love story in my experience. When I told my sister about it, she said she often give copies of it as wedding gifts. The book is fine literature, a marvelous story, highly creative, and deeply satisfying.

Wonderful Examination of Love.......2007-08-20

Every now and then a novel comes along that plays games with me. It's not until I can view it in it's entirety that I can sort out my opinions on it. Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera was one of those novels for me. It started out fantastic, a unique story with a well developed setting and well defined characters that I enjoyed. As I continued with the novel, my thoughts began to blur. The characters became blurry for me. I didn't know how to feel about them. My thoughts would change from page to page. Characters that I loved would suddenly seem vile and vice versa. But by the time I finished the novel, Marquez had sealed the deal for me. His beautiful words had won me over and I'm so happy that I chose to read this wonderful work of literature.

Love in the Time of Cholera is a love story. It is not your typical love story, however. This story is honest. The characters admit that sometimes love is feigned and at other times love comes as a surprise. It is the story of Fermina Daza, Juvenal Urbino, and Florentino Ariza; three characters that will remain with me for a long time. The setting is Colombia in the early 20th century and Marquez does an amazing job at placing the reader in that setting with it's warm landscape, almond trees, and markets. Florentino Ariza pledges his love to Fermina Daza when they are both in their youth, but the relationship is forbidden by Daza's father. Fermina Daza marries Juvenal Urbino, a doctor who saves the town from the cholera epidemic, and Florentino Ariza spends the next fifty years having various affairs with women who will never match up to Fermina Daza while observing her from the sidelines. When Urbino dies, Ariza once again pledges his love to Daza.

This book won the Nobel Prize for literature and I can't argue with that. I don't know if this book would be for everyone though. It is not a fast moving book at all, and I think that it is best read slowly. I'd also recommend that it be read in the summer as it goes nicely with the weather. This book reads like a memoir, a history of lovers. There are emotional highs and lows; anger, betrayal, love, passion, death, deceit, hilarity, honesty, and contentedness. There were times when I found it hard to stick with the book because it seemed stagnant, but it all comes together when observed as a whole and that final picture is a beautiful one. I'm glad that I saw this one through. Marquez has written a true masterpiece of literature and I look forward to visiting some of his other works.

Dry, boring trash.......2007-08-14

This novel, unlike captivating stories, was hard to pick up rather than put down. While reading it, I felt like I had returned to eighth grade where reading was an assignment. It was incredibly hard to trudge through the seemingly endless and uneventful first chapter. Perhaps, had the story been told first person rather than third, it could have been better. But I doubt it.

Wonderful book.......2007-07-15

I really liked the book. it was very nicely written. and the story is quite catchy. However, I still have one little critisism and it is about the names in it. There are too many names used in the book and sometimes I really found it difficult to follow them. Even it took me a while to distinguish Fermina and Florentino from each other. I don't know why Mr. Marquez had decided to use such similar names together. I wish he hadn't chosen them that way. But apart from that it was a great reading for me :)

El Amor En Los Tiempos Del Colera / Love in the Times of Cholera

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Another stroke of genius......
Magic Realism at its best !!!!
A Literary Monument

El Amor En Los Tiempos Del Colera / Love in the Times of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Manufacturer: Sudamericana
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 9500703203

Customer Reviews:

Another stroke of genius.............2004-10-28

One Hundred Years of Solitude is definitely my favorite book of all times. Since I considered I had read Gabo's masterpiece, I never got to reading Love in the Times of Cholera, until now.

A few days ago, I read Memoria de mis Putas Tristes, which came out about a week ago, and when writing a review, I thought too bad the book is not 900 pages long. Then, hungry for more divine prose and magic realism, I remembered Love in the Times of Cholera. I suddenly had 500 more pages of Gabo.

The book turns out to be a 50+ year long love story, superbly written as most of what Gabo has written. The prose grabs you and does not let you go until the very last line.

Every now and then, one reads a sentence in a book and wonders how much feeling, effort, expeience and luck it takes to word something so beautifully. This does not happen too often, and sometimes you go through numerous books without finding one of these, regardless of who the author is. Well, let me just say that there is one of theses magical sentences in just about every single page of Love in the Times of Cholera. The novel is like a bottle of excellent wine....each sip tastes better than the last one. This book will leave you with a sensation od deep, pleasant intoxication.

How does it compare to One Hundred Years? It's simply different. Even though time is probably the main character in both novels, while there's more magic in One Hundred Years, there's more love and passion in Love in the Times of Cholera.

I am left with the exact same feeling after reading every one of Gabo's boks: how the hell does he do it every time?

Don't miss out on the pleasure produced by this novel.

Magic Realism at its best !!!!.......2001-08-10

This is a love story. Yes. It describes with colorful and beautiful words a city that once was the center of the Spanish conquest, with Viceroys and nobility. Cartagena at the turn of the century, is only a shadow of this glorious past. But what makes this book unforgettable is the way you can see word by word, that the power of love is nothing without the element of destiny. A magnificent river, luxurious river ships, alligators sunbathing on the river banks, balloon rides and horse carriages. A fantastic story about all things long gone.

A Literary Monument.......2001-01-05

I read somewhere that the admirers of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (a novel that brought the Nobel Prize for Garcia in 1982) would be surprised to know that Gabriel Garcia Marquez has bettered it in the form of "Love in the Time of Cholera". Well, although I found the latter half of it a little cloggy, I was a great admirer of One Hundred Years of Solitude. But after reading Love in the Time of Cholera, I think it's not fair to compare as different works of fiction as these two novels are, and it won't do any good to Garcia as well.

The only thing common to these two novels, however, is the prose of Garcia. He weaves, with the dexterity of a master craftsman, small characters and trifle incidents into the vast fabric of the novels. Effortlessly moving from character to character and incident to incident, he provides small pegs and footholds to the reader so that he could ascend, like a rock-climber, to his colossal literary monuments. This is especially true for Love in the Time of Cholera, where the reader is provided with a spectacular finale and one feels indeed like setting foot at the summit of Mount Everest after reading the novel. This is by far the best ending of a novel that I have read so far.

There are dozens of important characters in Love in the Time of Cholera but I think the two most important protagonists are Love and Time. And both of them are so intricately interwoven together that sometimes it becomes difficult to tell which is which -- like two shrubs that run up the length of a tall tropical tree. The love of Florentino Ariza, a thin and shy boy, for the beautiful but whimsical Fermina Daza is unlike any in the literature. And in order to have her, our hero must overcome time (half a century!), her aloofness and more than 400 love affairs! I guess even Hercules would have given up in face of these obstacles.

Book Description

De jóvenes, Florentino Ariza y Fermina Daza se enamoran apasionadamente, pero Fermina eventualmente decide casarse con un médico rico y de muy buena familia. Florentino está anonadado, pero es un romántico. Su carrera en los negocios florece, y aunque sostiene 622 pequeños romances, su corazón todavía pertenece a Fermina. Cuando al fin el esposo de ella muere, Florentino acude al funeral con toda intención. A los cincuenta años, nueve meses y cuatro días de haberle profesado amor a Fermina, lo hará una vez más.

Con sagacidad humorística y depurado estilo, García Márquez traza la historia excepcional de un amor que no ha sido correspondido por medio siglo. Aunque nunca parece estar propiamente contenido, el amor fluye a través de la novela de mil maneras –alegre, melancólico, enriquecedor, siempre sorprendente.

Customer Reviews:

Never got it.......2007-05-12

Never got the product, got the worst feedback possible on my order, nest time will order bokks with any method but Amazon. I wanted it for a present and because of the delay and no feedback my opportunity was blow.

Un muy buen libro.......2006-10-10

Una historia muy simpática y refrescante. Te hace vivir una época de antaño gracias a la manera tan particular que tiene "EL Gabo" en su narrativa.
El eterno enamorado la considerara una hermosa historia de amor, mientras que una persona mas objetiva, podría describir a Florentino como una persona obsesionada.
No lo considero el mejor trabajo de Gabriel García Márquez, pero definitivamente es un muy buen libro.
La pasión con la que describe a cada personaje, hace que brote de ellos una magia particular que te hace quererlos, odiarlos, sentir pena y alegría por ellos, etc.
Gracias Gabriel García Márquez por haber creado una historia tan interesante.

Unmitigated Love: A Malady Even To Gods.......2006-07-20

This story highlights the hurldes that true love can overcome. And that when you are frank with yourself, there is nothing you cannot accomplish. Its a true test of your convictions, and is a story for all hopeless romantics. It showcases that two people can love each other to the point where nothing else matters...

Garcia Marquez es unico.......2006-01-06

Disfrute tanto de esta novela, que la volvi a leer pero en Ingles. Desde luego que la novela se saborea mejor en la hermosa lengua Española, pero la traduccion al Ingles no esta tan peor. No a todos les gusta el estilo de Garcia Marquez, pero lo que es a mi, su estilo me encanta. Es unico. Se han dado cuenta como el autor siempre se refiere a sus personajes por sus nombres y apellidos? (por ejemplo, nunca dice solamente el primer nombre; siempre este va acompañado de el apellido.) Que original, no? Porque le di solo 4 estrellas? Soy una amante de los clasicos, y no me gusta que este libro contine muchas cosas que no son edificantes. Un buen clasico (como War and Peace, de Tolstoy) no necesita vulgaridad ni malas palabras para dejar huella.

You have to read that in spanish.......2005-08-28

I think the book shows a lot of colombian background and the features of the people and nature are quite amazing described, so i think you have to read all in spanish to understand the really meaning of the book. I recomend to read that book to everybody who believes that the love never dies.

Average customer rating:

Love In The Time Of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Manufacturer: Jonathan Cape
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000J2XNLM

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If you love Garcia Marquez...you'll adore this book

Garca Mrquez: The Man and His Work
Gene H. Bell-Villada
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807842648

Book Description

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most influential Latin American writers of the twentieth century. His unique literary creativity is rooted in the history of the region, with all its social and political implications.

In this beautifully written examination of Garcia Marquez and his work, Gene Bell-Villada traces the major forces that have shaped the Colombian novelist and describes his life, his personality, and his political opinions. He considers Garcia Marquez's place in world literature and analyzes his short fiction and all of his novels from the great and complex One Hundred Years of Solitude—a cultural phenomenon the likes of which we have seldom seen—through Love in the Time of Cholera. He shows why Garcia Marquez has achieved a confluence of high art and popular success that is virtually unique in the twentieth century.

Bell-Villada examines the narrative works of Garcia Marquez for their historical and human content, for their literary technique and structure, and for their expert use of fantasy, ribaldry, humor, and satire. He describes Garcia Marquez as a global phenomenon and as a local boy, as a Nobel Laureate and as a Latin American Everyman, as a political writer and as a novelist of love.

The book will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers—generalists who enjoy his novels, teachers and students, and literary specialists and Latin Americanists investigating the culture and politics of the region.

Customer Reviews:

If you love Garcia Marquez...you'll adore this book.......2002-12-01

Gene H. Bell-Villada won me over in the first few pages of "García Márquez: The Man and His Works" when he wrote, "to this day I have not forgotten the sheer excitement I felt on first reading Cien años de soledad in 1968, and my utter bedazzlement on reaching its concluding paragraph. Since then the idea of writing on the great South American author for his North American devotees has been one small dream of mine."

To that end, Bell-Villada, a professor of romance languages at Williams College does not disappoint. This comprehensive and engaging book is a well-written study of García Márquez and his work. The research in this two-part book is meticulous. Part one is background on Colombia, the writer's life and his politics. Part two is a stimulating history of Macondo and a strong examination of the works. Both parts are filled with valuable information that helps explain Colombia and its long history of violence.

Bell-Villada is a good teacher. He patiently goes into great detail describing the expert use of fantasy, humor and satire. He also examines literary technique and structure in a simplistic fashion. The bottom line of this beautiful book is that it enhances the understanding, appreciation, and respect of the work of Gabriel García Márquez...the greatest living novelist in the world.

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Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Manufacturer: Penguin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (Perennial Classics)

One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.)

The Inheritance of Loss

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel

ASIN: B000GRQ542

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Love in the Time of Cholera

Useful and engaging

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries)
Thomas Fahy
Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Casebook (Casebooks in Criticism)

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold

ASIN: 0826414753

Book Description

This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years - from `The Remains of the Day' to `White Teeth'. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question.

Customer Reviews:

Love in the Time of Cholera.......2004-10-27

The book, Love in the Time of Cholera, is about love and all its forms and all ages. Gabriel Garcia Marquez used a wide variety of characters in the love story of fermina and Floentino to show love and all its forms. Marquez blends poetry and visual descripions that are so visual that you feel that you are there.The book is a captivating and intriguing story of love.

Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza are in their teens when they fall passionately in love. Their love is unquestionable until she moves away and returns saying their love was an illusion. She moves on and accepts the proposal of a wealthy Doctor Juvenal Urbino. As they live in their separate worlds, Fermina lives the life of a wife and mother while Florentino hols on to the memory of waht they had together. In their years of separation, Florentino goes through his 622 affairs in which he will try to satisfy his lust and compensate his loss of Fermina. But no love is greater than Fermina's, as he pledged himself never to marry another. After the unexpected death of Dr.Urbino, he again pledged his love to Fermina after 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days.

One signficant moment was when Fermina returns and realizes that her love for Florentino was an illusion. She rejected him and told him to forget what they had together. This is important because whole book reflects around this moment as Florentino and Fermina lives their separate lives. Fermina moves on to her own separate world while Florentino dwells on that moment of rejection and vows that one day he will gain her love.

This book is captivating and I would recommend it to anyone who loves a good love story.

Useful and engaging.......2003-05-03

Just picked this up and am already planning to assign it to one of my classes on modern lit--that ideal book that explains what Marquez is up to without either oversimplifying or overcomplicating. Fahy distills the most important material from research around Marquez without forcing us to wade through information that would only be of interest to someone writing a dissertation; furthermore, his voice is lively and approachable in doing so. This book is enjoyable reading suited to a wide audience--I hope to see more similar books in this vein.

3 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Books - 1) - Love in the Time of Cholera / 2) - One Hundred Years of Solitude / 3) - The Autumn of the Patriarch (Unboxed Set of Books)

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3 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Books - 1) - Love in the Time of Cholera / 2) - One Hundred Years of Solitude / 3) - The Autumn of the Patriarch (Unboxed Set of Books)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Manufacturer: various
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000WE3K4C

Product Description

3 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Books - 1) - Love in the Time of Cholera / 2) - One Hundred Years of Solitude / 3) - The Autumn of the Patriarch, (Unboxed Set of Books), in either Hard or Softcover, (See Seller Condition Comments), Shipped in one package to save on shipping costs.

Gabriel Garcias Marquez's Love In The Time Of Cholera (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

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Gabriel Garcias Marquez's Love In The Time Of Cholera (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations)

Manufacturer: Chelsea House Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0791081206

GradeSaver (tm) ClassicNotes Love in the Time of Cholera: Study Guide

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GradeSaver (tm) ClassicNotes Love in the Time of Cholera: Study Guide
Alice Cullina
Manufacturer: GradeSaver, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1602591059
Release Date: 2007-09-20

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