May 24, 2005 12:20 PM
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(Updated May 24, 2005 12:20 PM)
Love in the Time Of Cholera, I picked up this book from my institute’s library, for only one reason that it is written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Though the book jacket has generous dose of praise by Observer, NY Times, The Times etc. yet that would have not been suffice to attract my attention and hold it (these days almost all the books have favorable reviews from one or another publication/critics).
After reading around 30-40 pages I knew that this is really a masterpiece and Marquez is simply superb.
LITOC (Love in the time of cholera) revolves around three main characters, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, a very famous physician in Caribbean, Fermina Daza his wife and Florentino Ariza, Daza’s “eternal true lover”.
The story is set into Caribbean and against the backdrop of Caribbean culture, Marquez weaves a superb funny, witty story of old age, love, wait, death, sex and sensuality. The story titillates you, tickles you, makes you think and some time frightens you (when you start thinking of our own old age and its repercussions).
Florentino Ariza, product of “an occasional alliance” between Transito Ariza (his mother) and well known ship owner and one of the founders of a ship company Don Pius Loayaza, the occasional alliance failed to materialize into marriage and Florentino Ariza was brought up by his unwed mother (helped my secret helps from his physical father and after his death his uncle.) Ariza, a victim of chronic constipation, meets Daza, a school going girl, living with her father and aunt, when he goes to deliver the telegrams to Daza’s father and for Ariza it was love at first sight with Daza. Ariza whose only talent at that time (or for that matter his profession apart fro telegram office worker) was to write love letters and he used his talent to the fullest, writing love letters to Daza without a break, and soon she also started responding to the poetic love letters of Ariza, which were product of Ariza’s talent and cheap poem books sold on the roads and memorized by Ariza.
So far so good, but at one point of time Daza realizes that her attraction for Ariza is not love of teenage illusion and she leaves Ariza and in due course of time marries Dr. Urbino as per her father’s wish.
And here starts the wait of Ariza for Daza. He keeps on waiting for his first love. He waits for the death of Dr.Urbino, so that he can marry Daza, and his waits does not last for years or decades it goes on for half a century…..
Marquez narrative is LITOC is fantastic, his eye for details is beyond comparison and it never crosses the threshold limit of the reader. His depiction of a love less marriage marred by old age and haughtiness of Daza will make you chuckle. The story is full of sensuality and Marquez narrative and story telling gives you a “high” with description of numerous “physical loves” of Ariza, during his half century long wait for his first “spiritual love”.
The story makes you familiar with numerous kinds of love, relationship and characters. To allay the pain of not getting Daza and to soothe the waiting heart, Ariza searches for love everywhere in whorehouses, in extramarital affairs with women twice her age, in beds of widows .. everywhere. His affairs start with carnal desires and end in love, and some time vice versa.
Marquez has covered a plethora of human emotions is such a brilliant manner that you will not be able keep the book down.
Brilliant Work By Brilliant Author.
