Title: Love in the Time of
Cholera Author: Gabriel García Márquez; English translation by Edith Grossman
Year Published: 1985, translation 1988
Genre: Romance, General and literary fiction, Erotica, Drama, Historical fiction
Florentino Ariza falls in love with the
beautiful Fermina Daza, but just as the two are about to marry, Fermina breaks
it off. Worse, she marries the prestigious Doctor Juvenal Urbino instead. Florentino
lives a dissolute lifestyle as he pines for his true love, while the seemingly
perfect Urbinos struggle with their marriage. Some fifty years later, the old paramours
reunite, giving Florentino a second chance to declare his feelings.
Put this way, the plot sounds very
straightforward, and I suppose it is. And yet, the book is absolutely captivating.
Márquez brings his characters to life in a way that is simply masterful. The
protagonists are only ever almost likeable (for me, at least), but there is no
doubting that they are human in all their flaws and virtues. As you read their
stories, you become intimately acquainted with who they are, how they feel and
how they think, though at the same time, there is something about each person
that is left a mystery. An exquisite depth and breadth of human experience is captured
within these pages, from the mundane to the alarming. The book covers events as
varied as Fermina’s and Urbino’s greatest argument (there was soap!) to
Florentino’s defecation in a carriage and the brutal murder of a woman
following infidelity.
Cholera is set in an
unnamed city, presumably in Colombia, during the turn of the 20th century. It’s a context with various social, political and yes, medical
concerns which all go to shaping the identity of the characters. Though the
flavour of the setting suffuses the entire book, it never overwhelms; rather,
it forms a natural part of the story, the characters and the writing. On that
note, there is something sensual, visceral and almost sweaty about the way this book is written. I admire the English
translator for having achieved (or preserved) this atmosphere, but at the same
time, I can only at speculate as to how much has been lost in translation.
I will mention now that while romantic love is
the focus of the book, sex and sex-related topics feature prominently. It is at
this point that I turn to our hero Florentino Ariza. While some may see him as
the ultimate romantic, to me, he is, more than anything, one seriously creepy
dude. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that he’s the most polarising
character of the book.
<major spoilers>
So, how is Florentino creepy? Well, he “falls in
love” with the thirteen year old Fermina at the moment he first he lays eyes on
her, transforming into what we nowadays would call a stalker. While we get a
great sense of his passion and obsession, there is no real sense of why he “loves” her so fiercely; he just
does, or thinks he does. When he is rejected, he swears to stay faithful to
her: after all, her husband has to die at some point. Later, after Florentino is
sort of raped on a boat, he becomes a sex maniac. He dedicates himself to
seeking out women who’ll have sex with him and he documents his encounters in
writing. His various affairs (622 apparently) comprise a large portion of his
life and of the book. But of course, our hero must stay true to his One True
Love, meaning he basically treats these women as (thankfully consensual) sex
objects.
As overblown and ridiculous as Florentino’s
feelings might seem at times, it’s easy to believe that he believes them.
Despite his shifty behaviour, it’s also possible to root for him and wish for
his happiness… for most of the book. For this reader, our hero crosses the moral event horizon
when he goes all Humbert Humbert on us near the end, which, as a friend deftly
put it, is “totally not cool”. At this point, I found him so morally repugnant
that I was all the more amazed at my ability to still kind of sympathise for
him. It’s a testament to the author’s skill that he can write a character so
vile and so human, whose actions can be seen as both romantic and sociopathic
at the same time. I found the ending, with all its romantic airs, to be highly
unsettling. The book’s brilliant like that.
</spoilers>
Love
in the Time of Cholera is an exploration of love and lust; it demands its reader to think
about love and what it is. You may conclude that this is a story of the deepest
love, or alternatively, that none of the characters know love at all. It makes
you wonder what you know of love.
Additionally, the book touches on themes of time and mortality. The foibles of
the human body and the vicissitudes of aging are thrown into the limelight, adding
another dimension to our thoughts on love – how it lasts and how it changes.
There are no easy answers. These notions are integrated organically within the
story, and to read and think about them is thus never a chore (…and that is all
I will say about the book’s ~themes, for I am neither doing homework nor writing
a set of CliffsNotes).
Beautifully written and startlingly human, I
highly recommend Love in the Time of
Cholera. While it’s an immersive read, you should know that it’s not a
necessarily a comfortable one. It’s primarily a meditation on love, but it also
deals with sex, perversion and degenerating bodies, which might not be what
everyone is after. For what it’s worth, I personally found it tender, sad and
disturbing – and much too ominous to be romantic (seriously, look at
Florentino, man). It’s not so much a love story as a story about love. The book
can be wonderfully romantic, frighteningly sinister, or something else
entirely, depending on your interpretation, and that’s what makes Love in the Time of Cholera such a
masterpiece.
Alex’s
Rating: 4.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment