entertain

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a story of the powers love has in life. The book has no plot besides the intertwining lives of two people: the beautiful Fermina Daza, and Florentino Ariza, whose love for her lasts undying and unrequited for over fifty years.

Set in a city on the Caribbean coast of Columbia, Florentino Ariza’s love starts in his adolescence with a correspondence of letters, but is rejected and Fermina Daza marries instead the rich and charming Dr. Juvenal Urbino. Florentino Ariza, a poor poet, swears to wait his life for the day that she will love him back. Their lives are separated, but for Florentino Ariza, despite his many lovers, his life is lived for her, and he climbs in status in a riverboat company to rise to her level.

I loved the book from the start. Marquez’s writing is poetry and the descriptions that make the entire story enhance smells, views and emotions, and the story glows with a natural magical realism. The characters are all larger than life but realistic in their human imperfections. The book never drags, and to read it is to feed off its beauty.