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| Love in the Time of Cholera | 
 enlarge | Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £3.30
You Save: £4.69 (59%)
New (31) from £3.32
Avg. Customer Rating:  48 reviews
Sales Rank: 2068
Media: Paperback
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 0141032421
EAN: 9780141032429
ASIN: 0141032421
Publication Date: August 2, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 chapter 2 and i dont knwo where i am April 9, 2008
0 out of 4 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.
 Disappointing November 20, 2007
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
I think this book may have lost something in translation: it was undoubtedly very funny in parts and there are definitely interesting characters and plots. But I found Florentino Arizo extremely irritating - rather unfortunately, seeing as he's one of the main people in it - and was not at all bothered whether or not he got his true love at the end.
 The book is a bit repetitive in places but it is a delightful read November 18, 2007
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
It spans two entire lifetimes. It takes place between the end of the 19th Century and ends in the beginning of the 20th Century. Like all Marquez novels, this one is well written and a joy to read.
Marquez's use of fantasy realism is legendary and keeps the somewhat morose plot fun and moving. The main character stalks his lover in parks pretending to read on a bench as she passes by. His love becomes an obsession.
Marquez shows that love and the sadness it can bring is not for youth alone. It celebrates the powerful hold that true love can have on a man his entire life. This is a book that a man would enjoy as much as a woman. Also, if you missed reading Tino Georgiou's masterpiece--The Fates, go and read it. I'm loving this one.
 100 Years of Turpitude August 10, 2007
2 out of 14 found this review helpful
Casual misogyny, wooden characterisation, cliche - and that's the good bits. One for the charity bin.
A Master storyteller at the height of his power May 16, 2007
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."
So begins one of the greatest stories of love ever told. `Love in the Time of Cholera' is a wonderfully frail portrayal of love in all its forms. It is a story that proves that love can be nurtured and blossom, even in the barren lands of old age.
Frequently to be found gracing lists of the best books of the last fifty years `Love in the Time of Cholera' is one of the most renowned works by South America's pre-eminent author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It is a book with which many people fall in love. It tells the intertwined stories of half a century of unrequited love, set against the backdrop of a country on the verge of modernity.
When octogenarian Dr. Juvenal Urbino falls from a ladder while trying to rescue his pet parrot from a tree there is one man in the town who does not mourn his passing. His name is Florentino Ariz and for more than fifty years he has dedicated his life to waiting for this day to come. This day when he can once again profess his love for Fermina Daza, the woman who spurned him in the hazy days of their youth.
`Love in the Time of Cholera' chronicles all the different forms that love can take, from unrequited youthful obsession through soul-enhancing physical lust and platonic love to the undying flame of timeless love. But this is a love story with a difference, the subjects of the love are in the sunset of their lives, they are worn down, out of the habit of giving into such forgotten emotions. But while the last plague of Cholera sweeps the country side the aging couple sail up and down a river, together, at last, forever.
It is clear from page one that you are being serenaded by a writer at the very height of his story telling capabilities. The way in which he holds the characters so effortlessly in the air, dipping into their lives to extract an event or moment as if without a worry in the world. The structure is so natural, the shifts in point of view occur invisibly, as though you are not switching at all, for each characters story is about the same, almost personified, love.
Although beautifully and dextrously written you can see why some people don't like this. The prose is slow and can become bogged down in what seem like irrelevances. If you want a light, easy read then this is probably not the book for you. But if you want to read a book by an absolutely exceptional storyteller who knows his characters as though they were his oldest friends, then you are going to love this.
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