Love in the Time of Cholera (Vintage International) [Paperback]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Author), Edith Grossman (Translator)

Book Description

Release date: October 30, 2007

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this chronicle of a unique love triangle, the Nobel laureate's trademark "ironic vision and luminous evocation of South America" persist. "It is a fully mature novel in scope and perspective, flawlessly translated, as rich in ideas as in humanity," praised PW . 250,000 first printing.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

While delivering a message to her father, Florentino Ariza spots the barely pubescent Fermina Daza and immediately falls in love. What follows is the story of a passion that extends over 50 years, as Fermina is courted solely by letter, decisively rejects her suitor when he first speaks, and then joins the urbane Dr. Juvenal Urbino, much above her station, in a marriage initially loveless but ultimately remarkable in its strength. Florentino remains faithful in his fashion; paralleling the tale of the marriage is that of his numerous liaisons, all ultimately without the depth of love he again declares at Urbino's death. In substance and style not as fantastical, as mythologizing, as the previous works, this is a compelling exploration of the myths we make of love. Highly recommended. Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Vintage Books; Reissue edition (October 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307387143
• ISBN-13: 978-0307387141
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (563 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #253,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

439 of 470 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Examination of Love August 13, 1999

By [e-mail]

Format:Paperback

I think a lot of the online reviewers of this book don't realize that this book is not about the relationship of Fermina and Florentino. The book is about love in all of its forms, and the characters in the book exist as vehicles to examine the strangest and most powerful of all human emotions. Love in the Time of Cholera is about: unrequited love (Florentino for Fermina); marital love (Fermina and Juvenal); platonic love (Florentino and Leona); angry love (Florentino and the poet who makes him so furious); jealous love (the adulterous wife killed because of her affair with Florentino); young love (Florentino and Fermina in the beginning); dangerous love (the mental patient and Florentino); adulterous love (Juvenal and his affair, Florentino and many of his women); love from afar (Florentino and Fermina); elderly love (Florentino and Fermina, Fermina and Juvenal; the cyanide suicide); May-December love (Florentino and his ward); the relationship between sex, age, society, art, death and love (pretty much the whole book).

I could go on, but you get the idea. Any attempt to read this book as the story of Florentino and Fermina misses the point. The book is still very enjoyable that way, but look beyond the surface and enjoy Marquez' ruminations on that thing called love that drives us all crazy.

Incidentally, I think it's one of the best books ever written.

118 of 124 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars THE MANY ASPECTS OF LOVE June 9, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Love in the Time of Cholera takes place circa 1880-1930 in an unnamed Caribbean seaport city. The three main characters form a triangle of love, with the hypotneuse being the quintessential romantic, Florentino Ariza, a man whose life is dedicated to love in all its aspects.

As a young apprentice telegrapher, Florentino Ariza falls hopelessly in love with the haughty teenager, Fermina Daza. Although the two barely meet, they manage to carry on a passionate affair via letters and telegrams, until one day, Fermina Daza, realizing that Florentino Ariza is more "shadow than substance," rejects him and marries the wealthy dandy, Dr. Juvenal Urbino instead.

Florentino Ariza, who has sworn to love Fermina Daza forever, is, of course, stricken to the core, but Fermina's marriage is nothing he can't handle. As one century closes and another begins, Florentino Ariza rises through the ranks of the River Company of the Caribbean and sets off on a series of 622 erotic adventures, both "long term liaisons and countless fleeting adventures," all of which he chronicled and all the while nurturing a fervent belief that his ultimate destiny was with Fermina Daza.

Fifty-one years, nine months and four days after Fermina's wedding, on Pentecost Sunday, fate intervenes and Fermina becomes a free woman once again when Dr. Juvenal Urbino dies attempting to retrieve his wayward parrot from a mango tree. Seeing his chance at last, Florentino Ariza visits Fermina Daza after the funeral and declares, "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." Fermina's reaction is not quite what Florentino was hoping for. She orders him out of the house with the words, "And don't show your face again for the years of life that are left to you...I hope there are very few of them."

Fermina Daza, however, hasn't quite gotten Florentino Ariza out of her system and the story ends, symbolically, with a river journey into eternity.

It's hard to believe that Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written a book that is better than One Hundred Years of Solitude, but with Love in the Time of Cholera, he has done just that. Not quite magical realism, it is still magic of the highest order and it is pure Garcia Marquez. An exquisite writer, Garcia Marquez tells his tales with passion, control and unblinking humor with just the right amount of the fabulous woven in.

Unlike some of his slightly claustrophobic works, this novel has an almost epic quality and Garcia Marquez handles the shifts in time and character perfectly; from the opening lines you know you're in the hands of a master. The book is flawless: Not one word is out of place, not one sentence is awkward. Lesser authors might slip into the maudlin when writing an entire book on the many aspects of love, but Garcia Marquez never gives us less than crystalline insight into what it really means to live, to love and to live a life of love. The last chapter alone is a masterpiece no one who's loved, or loved and lost, will ever forget.

As the book closes, we sail down the river with Garcia Marquez at the helm, safe in the knowledge that he is a navigator of the highest order, one who can pilot the river of love unerringly. He certainly does just that in this shining, sometimes funny and always uplifting book of flawless perfection.

135 of 148 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Not love, as I believe in it November 27, 2007

By L. Boswell VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

As I began this book, I was recommending it to everyone. Marquez truly has a gift not only for beautiful description, but also for simplistic, powerful dialogue.

Ostensibly, this is a story of unrequited love. As a young man, Florentino Ariza falls in love (at first sight) with Fermina Daza after he sees her reading outside her home one afternoon. He begins to, more or less, stalk her, though it's definitely an innocent teenage crush type of stalk, not the scary "I'm chasing you in a dark alley" type of stalk. Soon the two begin to exchange letters, leaving them in secret places so they won't be discovered. All goes as planned until Fermina is caught writing a letter in school, gets expelled and is taken away on a "forget your bad-boy boyfriend" trip by her father. When she returns many months later, she sees Florentino and decides her "love" was merely immature infatuation and rejects him completely, and shortly after marries the prestigious Dr. Juvenal Urbino. Florentino then spends the rest of his life waiting for Urbino to kick the bucket, so he can get his second chance at Fermina. He whiles away his time by having casual affairs with many many many women.

I liked this book because it was well-written. The setting, a Caribbean island, is so vivid it feels like you're somewhere tropical while reading it; and as I said before, the dialogue is masterful--poetic even.

I disliked this book for more concrete reasons. For one, it goes against my nature to throw away decades upon decades of your life simply biding your time for some person to have a change of heart. But, let it be said that I don't, fundamentally, believe that there is just one "true" love for any person, and I don't believe in love at first sight, so that definitely taints my views on Florentino's decisions.

Second, one such `affair' that Florentino has, when he's in his seventies, is with a FOURTEEN year old. And not just any fourteen year old, but a girl he has been asked to act as the guardian over. The last time I checked, that was child molestation. And statutory rape. It's absolutely disgusting. I mean, I get that Marquez is trying to say that you can love at any age and that being old doesn't mean you're dead inside and useless, but seducing the child you're taking care of kind of leaps right over that point and lands firmly in a puddle of ick.

Third, another woman Florentino is involved with explains that the reason she's never married is because she's been waiting to find the man that raped her one night when she was younger--so she can marry him. The rape, as it is described, involves the man grabbing her and forcing himself on her on a boat. She doesn't see his face, doesn't know him and he never speaks to her. So the only interaction she has with the man is that he grabs her on a boat and rapes her. The very idea that someone would create a character who enjoys being sexually violated by a complete stranger to the point where she "falls in love" with the man is infuriating. I mean, liking it a little rough or being attracted to an aggressive man is one thing--this is entirely another.

Last, neither Florentino or Fermina is a very likeable character. Florentino is an unfaithful lecher who seems to have no remorse for the lives he ruins through his casual affairs (because, as the book explains, it's all about the love...of course it is), and Fermina is a rather dull, stuck-up and, dare I say it, bitchy woman. I really wanted something to like about the two of them, and I just didn't and I also didn't really find myself fighting for them to get together because the only thing ever keeping them apart was themselves. If you want to make yourself unhappy, be my guest. Just don't complain to me about it for 300 pages.