Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera plays with the counterbalance of illusion and reality, focusing on the context of love. Hallucinatory subject matter along with lush density makes for a wonderful read. Marquez’s tendency to bring the reader into his worldly experiences while making one wonder if such a wonderful environment actually exists, makes me want to live in Central America and live off the land with gypsies (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and live with macaws.

The story’s love affairs do become resolved, in some cases, but many of his introductions are opened with death. Through all the ‘fantasy’ exploitations, the reality of his characters are hair raisingly close to home. One of my ignorances though, is in the similarities to the naming conventions he gives his subjects. Many of them having the names which were passed down from generations. So everyone seems to be named the one before, making flashbacks difficult. And I did find the ending to be a little too, fairy tale in a negative sense … I thought of old people ‘doing it’ which kinda grosses me out to be honest. So, until the very end, this has become one of my favorite books which I will consistently recommend.