HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel…
Loading...

Love in the Time of Cholera (original 1985; edition 2013)

by Gabriel García Márquez (Author), Armando Durán (Reader), Ms Edith Grossman (Translator)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
27,692406105 (3.95)2 / 794
A long and complex love story alternating views from present and past which just further added to my confusion. I wanted to like this book and in fact there were some parts of the story I did enjoy. Overall, I would not recommend this book as an audio read. That being said, the author provided the dialect which provided authenticity to the story. I'm thinking I might have enjoyed listening to this book if I had read it first. I usually enjoy long complex stories but I was underwhelmed by this one. I wanted to give it 2-1/2 stars because when I finished I felt I had to piece together the redeeming parts of the story. ( )
  marquis784 | Nov 16, 2022 |
English (346)  Spanish (32)  Dutch (8)  Italian (3)  Catalan (2)  Hungarian (2)  Portuguese (Portugal) (2)  French (2)  German (2)  Swedish (1)  Hebrew (1)  All languages (401)
Showing 1-25 of 346 (next | show all)
Is it love though?... What is love? I don’t really think this is love. This is a book about time not love. Time and its effect. The ‘love’ here is a vehicle to show us how time changes people.

I think it’s a sad book but a very realistic one: the impurities and imperfections of life and love - learning to make do, controlling people, being governed by fears and emotions, transient happiness, being shot, buffeted and ricocheting through life like a pinball until an errant parrot brings about one’s demise.

As my fifth (maybe sixth?) Marquez, I feel qualified to say his books can go one of two ways: brilliance or bore-fests. I have enjoyed such works as ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ and ‘Voyage of the Shipwrecked Sailor’ but also hated ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ and now this. Partly I put it down to not being particularly romantic or liking fantasy but more so with this novel I just wanted to shake self-awareness into the characters. Granted, at the time the book was set, tradition and family pressures were rife, but I found it relatively infuriating that most of the characters spent their time pretending they were happy, oblivious they were unhappy or chasing idealistic ideas of happiness.

As a chronicle of time, I think it was really well done and brilliantly showed how time catches up with all of us (hence 2 stars not 1!) but ultimately not for me Gabriel, sorry, 2/5. ( )
  Dzaowan | Feb 15, 2024 |
Started out well, but as I read the book, I lost empathy for Florentino as he changed from a lovelorn dreamer to a stalker, predator, and pedophile. ( )
  jemisonreads | Jan 22, 2024 |
Evocative of time and place though a bit farfetched especially regarding unrequited love character. I can vividly emember many of the scenes and characters from the book. Too bad I didn't write a detailed review just when I had just finished it. ( )
  amaraki | Dec 20, 2023 |
second time listening (english and spanish) ( )
  ravco | Nov 15, 2023 |
Started out slow and authors style is hard to get used to at first. It’s not a quick read by any means. Paragraphs are long. But ultimately it turned out ok ( )
  debbie1215 | Nov 6, 2023 |
I wanted to like this so bad but it was truly a slog. This is one that I had to turn to an audiobook for because it was making not want to read anymore. And I tore through One Hundred Years of Solitude. I would really love to have someone who loved it explain to me why it is something that is so widely and publicly commended.Basically, if you like things that move quickly, absolutely avoid this book. If you like to torture yourself like me, give it a try. I had to give it three stars because it wasn't trash, but I cannot in good conscience give it four and put it up there with books I actually enjoyed. ( )
  ejerig | Oct 25, 2023 |
So, the only way to read this and not absolutely hate it is to think of it like you’re reading You by Caroline Kepnes. Listen, the main character is not redeemable or redeemed here. He is a horrible person. He is a narcissistic stalking pedophile rapist. This is not a love story. It is a look into the mind of a terrible human who sees women as only how useful they are and who stalks an idealized version of a girl he saw and communicated with when she was a teenager for 50 something years after even though she doesn’t reciprocate and is married, etc. Marquez’s comments on women are disturbing at minimum. His comments on rape are also disturbing. One character was raped on the beach in the dark by a man whose face she never saw and he writes that she spends her time looking for him because of how good the sex was. This is not what happens in a violent sexual assault by a stranger. This was written in the 80s too, not back in some older time where you could possibly explain away SOME of the comments. I mean, looking at descriptions of his writing, Marquez has at least three pieces where girls of 12 or 14 are taken by men that could be their grandfathers. I find him really really really disturbing now. Anyways… the writing was dense, but fine, but if you’re looking for a love story - look elsewhere. ( )
  Monkeypats | Oct 11, 2023 |
Um homem se apaixona pela trança de uma menina de família. O idílio dura algumas cartas, mas ao conhecer seu admirador, a moça rejeita-o e casa com outro. O amor, porém, persiste e dura a vida inteira. Nesta fábula de realismo-fantástico, Gabriel García Márquez mostra que a paixão não tem idade
  Camargos_livros | Aug 29, 2023 |
Not good. ( )
  MariaStroud | Aug 25, 2023 |
Here's what I wrote in 2011 about this read: "Quite a lot to this one!! Gabriel Garcia Marquez himself advises we not fall into his trap of thinking this is a sweet and simple love story. Based in Cartegena (still want to go there), and explores various forms of healthy, mature, unhealthy (leaning toward prevervse - think Lolitha), long-lasting, developing, etc. love. Some serious touches on aging as well . . . " ( )
  MGADMJK | Aug 23, 2023 |
Realmente es poco lo que se podría agregar a lo que cientos de miles de lectores cautivados ya han dicho de este libro, quizá sólo mencionar que esta debe ser ya mi cuarta lectura y, creo que eso también habla muy bien de un libro.

Infortunadamente, no puedo decir lo mismo de la edición, que en esta ocasión toco en audiolibro, que resulta desastrosa, por decir lo menos. Es una lástima que una obra de esta envergadura no tenga una edición igualmente impecable, el narrador es muy bueno, pero los cortes y errores son terribles. Resulta fácil entender que ningún libro se escapa de las erratas, pero cuando una obra está plagada de ellas, habla de un editor descuidado y con prisa por publicar una obra.

Una lástima que le haya tocado este editor precisamente a una obra de García Márquez, que merecía, como ya lo he comentado, una edición impecable. ( )
  uvejota | Jul 26, 2023 |
I'm having a hard time coming up with a numerical rating for this.

The writing is beautiful but exhausting. There is basically no dialogue, so it took me FOREVER to read this book.

The male characters are insanely unlikable, like throw the book across the room unlikable. Almost like, can't-read-it unlikable. The idea that this is a "love story" in the traditional sense (like in that it would make me feel swoony,) is incorrect, I think. Florentino Ariza is a stalker and a pedophile and he should have taken a freaking moment in those 50-some-odd years to just freaking get over this imaginary idea of Fermina Daza he was carrying around. Sad.

As a book about mistaking obsession for love, and about the ways people create imaginary versions of the people they are attracted to, it's pretty spot-on. I read a review somewhere that said I'd be "rooting for the lovers." I absolutely was not rooting for them. I did root for Fermina, however, and hoped that she would go off and stay with her cousin whose company she enjoyed so much, and leave these sad man-babies to their own devices.

Anyway, it was thought-provoking, emotion-inducing, and beautifully written, so I think I liked it. I just hated most of the people in it. :P
  veewren | Jul 12, 2023 |
Armando Duran was a marvelous choice of narrator for this audiobook. However, I think I might have had difficulty with the audiobook if I hadn't already read the book in print. Love in the Time of Cholera is more straightforward than One Hunderd Years of Solitude but Marquez still writes with complexity, switching from past to present and back. ( )
  leslie.98 | Jun 27, 2023 |
I wasn't sure what to expect with this book, and it turned out to be different than I thought it would be. The novel is basically a love story that lasts many years, with many years spent apart, either seeking pleasure elsewhere or in a marriage. In old age they find each other again. I enjoyed the book, although at one point I thought the title should be "Sex in the Time of Cholera" because that seemed to be the main topic for quite a few pages. One relationship with an under-aged girl by someone almost 60 years her senior I found to be particularly disturbing and not easy to read. ( )
  hobbitprincess | May 20, 2023 |
I regret reading this! ( )
  BookReviewsCafe | Apr 27, 2023 |
Can't say I was too delighted in this story of unrequited love. The author has some great insights into the topics of marital love, and love at various life stages, and the relationship of sex to love. But his female protagonist is so awful it's pretty hard to fathom why the male protagonist holds a torch for her for so long. And the pace is sooooo slow. If you like a lot of descriptive detail in your stories, Love in the Time of Cholera may be your cup of tea. It definitely was not mine. ( )
  Anita_Pomerantz | Mar 23, 2023 |
I had high hopes for this one but in the end it felt like a waste of my time. Very sad and depressing... ( )
  mtngrl85 | Jan 22, 2023 |
A long and complex love story alternating views from present and past which just further added to my confusion. I wanted to like this book and in fact there were some parts of the story I did enjoy. Overall, I would not recommend this book as an audio read. That being said, the author provided the dialect which provided authenticity to the story. I'm thinking I might have enjoyed listening to this book if I had read it first. I usually enjoy long complex stories but I was underwhelmed by this one. I wanted to give it 2-1/2 stars because when I finished I felt I had to piece together the redeeming parts of the story. ( )
  marquis784 | Nov 16, 2022 |
Literary fiction set in a fictional city in what I assume to be Colombia during the late 1800’s through early 1900’s that explores the perils of obsessive love over the course of five decades. There are three primary characters in this complicated love triangle: Fermina Daza, Florentino Ariza, and Dr. Juvenal Urbino. There is a stalkerish feel to Florentino’s obsession with Fermina, and a dark side to his personality, so it is not for anyone looking to read a traditional uplifting romance.

The story is told in third person omniscient by an unnamed narrator, allowing the reader access to the inner thoughts of the main characters. Themes include examinations of the many forms of love and lust, transformations caused by the passage of time, and the impact of aging, particularly the demeaning views held by society toward the elderly. Cholera makes multiple appearances, not only as a literal plague, but also as a symbolic representation of war, humankind’s destruction of nature, and the more esoteric “ailments of the heart.”

The primary strength of this novel lies García Márquez’s lyrical and sensory writing. The novel is filled with detailed descriptions of sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and touches. Though published in 1985, it harkens back to the classic writing style of the mid-1800’s. It is written in dense prose, often moving forward and backward along the timeline within a chapter, or even a paragraph, with no warning. There is very little, if any, dialogue. The chapters are lengthy and untitled, with very few easy stopping points along the way. It will not be to everyone’s taste, since there is very little in the way of a plot and the pacing is slow.

There are several ways to interpret this book and, in that way, I found it thought-provoking. Recommended to those who like to keep up with works considered modern classics or appreciate explorations of obsession masquerading as love. ( )
1 vote Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 |
To preface, i think the main issue of interpretation people have with this book is thinking it is indeed a romance novel and that leads them to either romantacizing the main character [who is indeed an awful person] or rebuking the entire book as a romantacization of him. Both of which i find amusingly ironic.

It can get hard to tell the difference, because marquez has a very matter of fact writing style wrapped up in beautiful prose so it may seem like that, but at the core of it there is no outright appreciation or condemnation of vile acts in his books - they are stated as is, and written with the same elegance hed describe the magdalena river with. It is up to you to react to them.

The book reads to me as a mediation between the perils of too little love, based on societal expecations and conformity versus overwhelming deathly passion - with ideas on class, background, practicality, and a general exploration of love and how it is treated in society. To me, although the hero may win at the end, that deathly passion that lead him there is something that caused so much anguish to him and everyone he met along the way that it made the fruit of his efforts into something repugnant and disappointing, static and deadly.

I find the misinterpretions funny. The two love interests seem to be opposites - a representation of romantacism versus practicality. Both have their acts of evil: those of the doctor are written without the romantic lens and prose of his counterpart, and pale in comparison in terms of the severity of the act. Yet, the romantacism of florentino disguise the actual severity and evil of his actions. His being driven by love and looking at everything through beautiful prose act as a smokescreen for how his 'too much love' is actually him taking advantage of and ruining the lives of multiple women, the worst of which culminates in his grooming and rape of the young daughter of a relative he was supposed to be a guardian too, who upon realizing how she has been used and tossed aside kills herself . So you can see how, the misinterpretations of a book that seeks to disguise evil behind the romantacism of the character as a romantic book is incredibly ironic.

This is as far as my praise goes however. As much as i adored 100 years of solitude, the same techniques used there did not suit cholera for me. There were moments that irked me, and while i usually adored marquezs in depth details of random things that make the world feel alive, here it was less poetic and more turgid. Honestly, despite the skill with which marquez managed to employ narrative and writing structurally as part of the themes he was exploring with the characters - the story and characters themselves were not of much entertainment or thought to me. Additionally, i found the way black women and east asians were described in this to be quite.. Strange. Either way, though I appreciate the story it was difficult to go through because of just how long and boring it got at times, and no amount of lush prose can make up for a story that feels stagnant.

I would only recommend this to hopeless romantics and people who genuinely like romance novels as a wonderful read that makes some excellent commentary on those things.

To anyone that already doesn't have a care for either, like me, it doesn't have particular value aside from being beautifully written and well crafted, but ultimately, because of my tastes and a dislike of romance and a general sense of boredom that pervaded while reading this - no. ( )
  soulsilver | Sep 10, 2022 |
The first fifty pages of this book are perfect. The rest of the novel is brilliant too but Marquez does not ever recreate the brilliant experience of reading the last day of Juvenal Urbino's life, smelling the bitter almonds, reading his novels, feeling his old age pains. He is only a transitory character, if the protagonist of the novel is really a fifty-three-year unrequited love. It's a book about destructive urges - of boats which consume the forests they run through until there is no more forest - of new loves which can only stem the invasive thoughts about old loves for just a moment.

Unlike 100 Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera focuses on only a few people, and it feels more homely and intimate in its storytelling. Even if much of the novel is just Florentino Ariza's numerous sexual exploits, the writing is so beautiful as to render the content of the sentences to be only half as important as the splendor of the words themselves.

Cholera and love may be much the same disease, but Marquez's writing makes the pain of the latter seem just about bearable for the brief moments of pleasure and solace it can eventually bring. ( )
1 vote Danisstillalive | Sep 6, 2022 |
OK, Marquez is not for me. I wanted to like this book. He has a sort of magical command of words and sometimes I was enthralled by the language and cadence, but I was not charmed by the book and I would not call it a love story. There was little or nothing of love in any of these relationships, and I would go so far as to say that Ariza is a psychopathic sexual deviant and a stalker.

In what world is it an enhancement to character when a 76 year old man sleeps with a 14 year old girl who is in his charge as a guardian? But Marquez describes this as both natural and "love". Not in my world...and when she commits suicide and he knows it is because she is in love with him, it is ludicrous. As well, another prominent character is described as having been raped by a man and then spending her life looking for him because he is the only man who can satisfy her "love". Truly? This is Nobel Prize plot conception?

I know there are many who believe Marquez is a great writer. I have read two of his books and can say with conviction that this will be my last. Every writer is not for every reader. The best thing about this book is its lyrical title, it makes me feel duped. ( )
  mattorsara | Aug 11, 2022 |
Such beautiful writing. I'm glad I waiting so long between this and the other two I've read: "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Of Love and Other Demons."
Delicious! ( )
  bugenhageniii | Aug 6, 2022 |
I‘m not sure how I feel about this book. My sympathies were with Florentino, until the last chapters. He pushed some boundaries that, even for the time, I had a problem with. Fermina was an interesting character who‘s impulsiveness seemed to work out for her in the end, but could have went terribly awry.
  christyco125 | Jul 4, 2022 |
Masterpiece in every way. ( )
  John_Hughel | Jun 23, 2022 |
Showing 1-25 of 346 (next | show all)

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (3.95)
0.5 17
1 118
1.5 20
2 309
2.5 54
3 969
3.5 214
4 1854
4.5 247
5 1858

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

Penguin Australia

3 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.

Editions: 0141189207, 0141032421, 0141037458

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,185,991 books! | Top bar: Always visible