Book o' the Month: Love in the Time of Cholera

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez is the kind of book you might find on the syllabus for a literature class and end up binge-reading because you just can't put it down.

Florentino Ariza has been in love with Fermina Daza for fifty-one years, nine months, and fours days, when he finally has the opportunity he has waited so long for--to tell her he still loves her.  This novel chronicles the course of both their lives up to that point and beyond.  It is a meditation on heartbreak, marriage, and ageing, among many other themes.  I found myself marking at least six pages where there was a line or passage that seemed to be written about my own life.

Don't expect yourself to love or even particularly like all the characters.  They all have their flaws, but that is where we might find ourselves in the pages of this book.

I very much enjoyed the way the narrative meanders throughout the novel (if not the way Ariza meanders).  It is the second book I have read recently, translated from Spanish, my second language.  There is such an interesting sensibility in the style of storytelling.  I am not sure whether or not it is a feature of the original language or of Latin American authors in general.  I will have to do some more research to find out.  Or go back to college!

Head on over to Turn the Page ... Tuesday at Some of a Kind to add more great books to your summer reading list.