Book Review: Love in the Time of Cholera

Mimosas and Marquez = Bliss

100 Years of Solitude by Garbriel Garcia Marquez is routinely listed on the "Greatest Books of All Time". Actually, on this particular list it was listed as number four. It is a literary classic and if you were not forced to read it as a literature major, then I would encourage you to pick it up and dive into the magical realism that is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Columbia. However, this book review is not about 100 Years of Solitude; instead, this review is about that book's younger and more sultry younger sister, Love in the Time of Cholera. 

Love in the Time of Cholera is in fact about love. Marquez plunges the reader into a stream of consciousness narrative that addresses young love, unrequited love, triangulated love, fated love, lost love, and forbidden love. All these loves are witnessed through the experiences of Florentino and Fermina, our main characters of this story. They are destined to meet in the courtyard of a Columbian villa and their journeys carry them all the way to old age on a quarantined boat in the age of Cholera. It is a love story, but not a fairy tale; therefore, it is supremely beautiful.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a romantic writer who intoxicates you with his words and vivid descriptions. He is a master of the written word and his latin flair drips off each syllable. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the novel:

1. “It was the year they fell into devastating love. Neither one could do anything except think about the other, dream about the other, and wait for letters with the same impatience they felt when they answered them.”

2. “The weak would never enter the kingdom of love.”

3. “In the plenitude of their relationship, Florentina Ariza asked himself which of the two was love: the turbulent bed or the peaceful Sunday afternoons, and Sara Noriega calmed him with the simple argument that love was everything they did naked. She said, 'Spiritual love from the waist up and physical love from the waist down.”

4. “..the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and [that] thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past”

5. “Courage did not come from the need to survive, or from a brute indifference inherited from someone else, but from a driving need for love which no obstacle in this world or the next world will break.”

6. “nothing one does in bed is immoral if it helps perpetuate love”

7. “I’ll have plenty of time to rest when I die, but this eventuality is not yet part of my plans.”

8. “Love becomes greater and nobler in calamity.”

9. “By virtue of marrying a man she does not love for money. That’s the lowest kind of whore.”

10. “It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end it itself. ”
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​Love in the Time of Cholera is glorious, romantic, comedic, and lovely. I would recommend this book 100 times over, after of course Marquez's first novel 100 Years of Solitude. 

Buy the book here!