BOOK REVIEW: "Love in a Time of Cholera"

Love in the Time of Cholera
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Copyright 1988
Vintage Books (Random House)
Adult Fiction
2.5 Bookmarks

A strangely odd and depressing story to have been made into a movie. I haven't seen the movie, but I'm pretty sure it's not one I would really enjoy watching.

Basic plot of the book is this: young boy falls in love from a distance with young girl, expresses his love solely through written letters since it's nearly impossible for them to actually meet face to face, father finds out, takes daughter away for a length of time, but boy manages to continue writing letters which are sneakily delivered to the girl, father thinks he's successfully ended the little love affair and thus returns the daughter home where she, nearly on accident, runs into the boy face to face. Girl turns tail, runs and marries the first man who proposes to her. Boy never gives up hope that he will be with girl (once the husband dies, of course). And so he waits. And waits. And waits. Most of the book is the waiting. And then suddenly, almost without warning, the characters are in their 80s.

I won't spoil the ending because it actually is kind of an enjoyable book to read, and many readers out there would appreciate it. It is very well-written with beautifully detailed sentence structure and compelling narrative.

Particularly meaningful, as I have always felt that it was easy to love through the written word. Being able to write what you feel and to read between the lines of what someone else has written is, for me, the ultimate romanticism. It is an art that is lost, and is painfully missed.

I probably would have given it a higher score if I didn't feel so sad when I finished reading it. It needed a little lightening up, but I suppose with a name like "Love in the time of Cholera", I shouldn't have expected it to be much more than depressing.