The Anatomy of Love.

Book - Love in the time of Cholera

Author - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Translator - Edith Grossman

A Timeless love story connecting with any generations. The perfect interpretation and dissection of love at various stages of our lives is represented through the story of two lovers Florentino and Fermina.

Florentino, a love's creature, and Fermina are madly in love as teenagers. Their romance continues secretly through exchange of letters and telegrams without knowing each others faces. In due course of time, their love is forbidden by Fermina’s father, who is determined to stop this at any cost. He arranges everything and leaves the town with Fermina. They keep the passionate love affair alive through occasional exchange of letters. Her voyage through many places broadens her mind and after her return she rejects Florentino considering this as an illusion of her childish mind. She simply tells him to “forget it,” demands that he return her letters and gifts, and promptly decides to forget he ever existed. This becomes an agonizing setback for Florentino.

Fermina joins a “Marriage of Convenience”, marries a wealthy doctor - Dr. Juvenal Urbino, who in various ways is exact opposite of Florentino. From the first day of this marriage Urbino realizes that he doesn’t love Fermina but is determined to find LOVE together all through this journey of marriage. Having sworn his love to Fermina Daza forever, he settles in to wait for as long as he has to until she's free again. After the death of Fermina’s husband which is 51 years, 9 months and 4 days after the fateful day by rejection from Fermina, he proposes his eternal love: ''Fermina, I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.'' Shocked and furious, Fermina orders him out of the house. ''And don't show your face again for the years of life that are left to you. . . . I hope there are very few of them.'' But things takes twists and the love journey is culminated through a final riverboat journey by the lovers.

In his youth after being rejected by Fermina, he vows to remain single all his life for the eternal love burning in his mind. At every stage of life, he is hunt by the nostalgia for Fermina. His nostalgia of love is eventually transformed into an awareness of the reality of love as it must be lived in the present. He tries to find solace through various dalliances, one night stand etc. He turns into a nocturnal animal and turns to street to enjoys his loneliness with a lot of ladies, widows, girls etc in his 622 assignations but his eternal love is always preserved for one lady Fermina and prays for the quick death of Fermina’s husband. He shares his yearning for Fermina only with his mother. She is the only lady who feels the symptoms of his son’s agonizing pain caused by love but is soon rendered memory less by fate and dies subsequently of old age. Being Lonely and stung by love Florentino gets more determined to wait for the fateful day when he can again be together with his Lady love.

The characters are very well written and lovable by the readers. Florentino, a devoted, caring, odd for his age and time lover and his eternal love for Fermina. His sufferings and troubles for love evolve a great deal of pity from the readers. Fermina Daza, a haughty, obstinate woman whose identity is traded for the stable life of a wife and mother. Dr. Juveneal Urbino, the effervescent, extrovert and youthful young doctor. The novel is a guide to the unfolding events of characters through the eyes of author, you find a third person omnipresent in every scene and novel is reading through the eyes of author. What will happen with Florentino and Fermina will keep the readers sticking to their pages all the way. It loses its pace during the second half but the wonderful and vivid descriptions of the place, time and state of its characters are great readers delight. The novel takes a radical approach to dwell about the vows of love exchanged in the youthful idiocy and which can be honored much later in life when we ought to know each other well. He to persevere for his love for as long as it might take through all the years of suffering.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez can write vivid heart breaking descriptions of the joy and agony of love in all of its many forms like no other. He writes with impassioned control, out of a maniacal serenity. He perfectly captures the inherent contradictions in human character. During the riverboat journey when Florentino observes his love of life naked to her waist, just as he had imagined her. Her shoulders were wrinkled, her breasts sagged, her ribs were covered by a flabby skin as pale and cold as a frog’s. Florentino comes to know about the higher aspects of love. Excellent translation by Edith Grossman.

It is a faithful, beautiful piece and ageless piece of work.

Don’t miss it if you are a creature of love.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (2)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

...
written by baba bhawan, November 21, 2009

This is my all time favorite piece.

The narrations, explanations, sense of humor & writing style of the author is par excellence.

A perfect logical ending to finish the story.

I would love to read this book again and again till I die.

• 
• +0
• 
• 

...
written by Sanjay Chapekar, November 23, 2009

This is an weird love story...nothing in there to look for it. G. G. Marquez lets down

• 
• +0
• 
• 

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Add Comment Preview