March: Love in the Time of Cholera (Tristinn's Review)

Candace, the third member of our reading club, took us on a wild literary journey for March - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Marquez.

Contrary to popular belief, none of the major characters get cholera. It's really more of the backdrop to a most interesting love story. The story centers on Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza who meet when they are very young and instantly fall in love. Eventually they grow up and Fermina realizes that Florentino is not the guy for her and falls out of love. She goes on to marry the town's prestigious doctor while Florentino is left heartbroken. That covers about 50 pages of the 350 page book. The remaining 300 pages follow the two characters as they carry on with their separate lives. Fermina becomes an integral part of high society while Florentino becomes very successful in the shipping industry. Over the course of the next 50 years, Florentino never gives up his passionate love for Fermina and vows to wait for her...for forever if necessary. Eventually, when Fermina's husband has died and they are both old, the two of them find one another once again .

When Candace, Annie and I got together to talk about our impressions from the book, it was painfully obvious that it was a difficult book to describe. It was so different from many other books I have read. As Candace put it, it was more like we were watching the characters live their lives rather than personally connecting with the characters. I didn't love nor really hate any of the characters; I didn't really care what happened to them. It was definitely a love story but it was more about the realities of love rather than fanciful love. 

When I think about what I learned from the book, I would say my major takeaway was that love comes in many different shapes and flavors. The way you love one person is probably not how you will love someone else. Love is more of a fluid concept - not something constrained by narrowly defined rules. It's flexible and changes.

WILLIAMS SCALE RATING: Tomatoes {Sometimes you love them, sometimes you hate them}