Love in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Translated from Spanish by Edith Grossman

“All that was needed was shrewd questioning, first of the patient and then of his mother, to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera.” Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Basic Plot Summary: Florentino and Fermina were in love when they were young, but then Fermina marries Dr. Urbino. Florentino is convinced that their love is true (or at least his love for her is true) and commits his life to waiting for Dr. Urbino to die so that they can finally be together. In the meantime, he builds his business career and has affairs with hundreds of women.

The book begins with the last day of Dr. Urbino’s life. We then travel back to when Florentino first lays eyes on Fermina and their brief and simple love affair. We then steadily move forward in time to how Fermina and Dr. Urbino came to meet and marry, how Florentine bided his time until he could be with Fermina again, and then we come back to after Dr. Urbino has died and Florentino has approached Fermina again.

My Reaction: You guys have no idea how excited I was to read this book. I read Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude in high school and fell in love with it, so I had high hopes for Love in the Time of Cholera. From the summary on the back of the book (similar to the plot summary above) I had a very different expectation on what some of the relationships would be like in the book, but I wasn’t disappointed that I was wrong. The way the relationships were written gave the characters more depth and made their interactions more complicated and fraught with emotion.

I felt like it also was an accurate representation of a lot of relationships between young lovers, which surprised me a little. I expected the relationship between young Fermina and young Florentino to be represented much differently in the book, though I’m glad it was written how it was. It showed an intensity, but a rather immature intensity and showed how easily broken they are. It was also interesting to read about the marriage between Fermina and Dr. Urbino, because it represented a different type of relationship between a man and a woman; perhaps less traditional (or maybe more traditional in the time period in which the story is set), but not unhealthy. Mutually beneficial and not necessarily loveless.

The relationship that surprised me most of all was that of Fermina and Florentino after Dr. Urbino died. At first it was exactly what I expected it to be, but then, because of who Florentino is as a person, the relationship started changing. IT wasn’t necessarily a bad direction, just one that I didn’t expect, and I’m not sure I like it better than what I was expecting, as I did with their relationship when they were both young. Part of me feels like Fermina wouldn’t have changed her stance on her feelings towards Florentino, but I also dont’ know what it’s like to be a widower in that time and place and how it would feel to be alone after decades and decades of marriage.

Overall, I definitely give it a 10/10 and can’t wait to read the last book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez on my list. In my opinion he is a brilliant author who weaves complex and wonderful stories.

Read on!

Molly