Customer Reviews: Read 42 more reviews...
 Charming and absorbing... July 16, 2008
I found this book lovely, most of all because it engages you so deeply with the characters, especially Florentino. Yes - it does make you wonder how you can feel sympathy for him, since he sleeps with over 500 women (!) while waiting for the love of his life, but I think it's his humanity and romanticism which make you want him to win over Fermina from the start to the end, despite his imperfections. The sweetness of his other habits, such as writing love poems for young sweethearts, and his gentle honesty, made me adore him.
The book will absorb you and give you the feeling you are living under the hot Columbian sun, smelling the smells of the town and walking in the market under the blazing heat, to the extent I almost had culture shock from my bedroom! I read it whilst ill during 1 1/2 days and it was gorgeous. I didn't want it to end, and yet I did, since I had been waiting all that time with Florentino, and found myself holding my breath as his life-changing moment approached.
The language is rich and funny, the story is sometimes surprising (for me, especially when Fermina suddenly decides their youthful madness was all an illusion, and also the very end, which was a bit too perfect, maybe? maybe not.. - don't get me wrong, I was desperate for a happy ending!!) but the book was for me a great read which I couldn't put down, or stop thinking about in between.
If you have a heart, then I defy you not to be moved by this book, especially if you can accept the imperfections of the characters and take the book as a story about love, not the people, but the love between them, which another reviewer described so well. I want to read 100 Years of Solitude now and hope I will enjoy it as much. I'm very happy to have discovered this great author!
A JOYOUS & MOVING MEDITATION ON LOVE, PASSION AND, ABOVE ALL, LIFE July 7, 2008
For some, this is a story in which nothing happens. For me, this is a story in which the only thing that happens is the only thing that happens to us all - life! We are the form and function of our dreams and passions. We live for them, and they for us.
The narrative flows like the river of life mentioned within - the Great Magdalena River as Florentino remembered it - illuminating these passions and dreams, these loves and beliefs, and does so in a non-discriminatory way that humanises all the characters we meet along our way even if their morals are not our own.
We are all human beings who have our own dreams and desires. This book in celebrating the passions that drive the characters we meet within is also a celebration of our own capacity to dream to live and live our dreams, and if that isn't worth recommending it for, then I guess it's time open a can of Carling and stick a Steven Segal movie in the DVD.
 Absolutely no connection at all... June 25, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Almost as mystifying as this book itself, is the love many people express for it. Marquez has a glittering reputation and a Nobel Prize on his mantelpiece but, on the basis of this, it is hard to see why. As ever with Marquez, there is a slow pace, characters with similar names, unmentioned time slips, a dash of misogyny, and unrequited lust. Quite why this somehow translates into a masterpiece is beyond me.
The story itself, far from being a tribute to passion, is nonsensical. A young man espies an attractive girl, and becomes besotted with her in a childish, immature way. After initially encouraging him, she spurns him. Contrary to my expectations of the book, it is not a story of unrequited but still-burning passion. He goes around screwing every woman in town (including a 14-year-old), periodically expressing crocodile tears of self-pity. She marries for money and prestige, but doesn't really regret it. Eventually...well, I won't spoil it, but things change at the end of their lives.
Both characters are miserable, self-indulgent, selfish, dull and unable to generate sympathy or empathy from the reader. They have no passion except to fulfil childish whims, conceits and tantrums. This is not love, unrequited or otherwise. This is self-obsessed angst.
The only area where the book succeeds is its' descriptions of the minutiae of a long-lasting marriage - the little accommodations, adjustments and unspoken admirations that keep a relationship on an even keel.
There are characters introduced as if they are important, and never mentioned again. There are whole periods where nothing of consequence happens; these are not compensated by descriptive passages of insight, beauty or exposition - they are just meandering prose. Perhaps it is all lost in translation from the Spanish. Or perhaps it was poor to begin with.
Above all, I resent the implication by many reviewers, that anyone who doesn't like this book is some kind of Dan Brown/John Grisham-loving moron, who is incapable of reading a book where something doesn't blow up every five minutes. For people who love this book, congratulations - but don't belittle those who don't with some kind of pathetic intellectual snobbery. Great writing is writing that connects. This doesn't connect with a vast number of readers, and appears to be written as if the author didn't even try.
 Is love worth waiting for? April 10, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Do you ever really get over your first love? Are all other relationships a form of escape from the fiery passion of that first love - even if it is unrequited? It wouldn't be spoiling the plot to tell you that Marquez's answers are no and yes respectively to those questions - but it does take a lot of words and reading to time to get there.
I found the central couple Florentino and Fermina very hard to like, whereas the pompous yet generous doctor that Fermina marries after rejecting Florentino is much more sympathetic. I didn't find the jumps between present day and several times in the past particularly annoying, but did long for Fermina and Florentino to finally get it together much sooner than the time-shifts permitted. The language is florid, and detailed, but didn't give me as much sense of place as I had hoped for.
Slightly disappointing - but I will read more Marquez.
 chapter 2 and i dont knwo where i am April 9, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Hi there,
after starting this book and reaching chapter two i still dont know what era we are in, what century and what country, nothing is explained and it is very slow.
Im hoping it gets better.
|
