Book Review: Love in The Time of Cholera

- By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

(This isn’t going to be a complete and studied literary criticism type of review, because I’m trying to minimize spoilers and I haven’t done a close enough reading, and I do want to encourage you to read it and comment if you haven’t already! :) )

I thought the book was about love, and passed through many assumptions before I got halfway through and realized that it was actually about marriage and gender relations, and the silly transparent hypocrisy pervading both institutions held so sacred by the world in order to create a semblance of order and ‘civilization’. My books-as-makers-of-destiny hypothesis is proved once again with this book that turned out to be a pathbreaker for me and which is in the process of making me come to terms with my inevitable destiny – marriage and babies (yes, the fatalistic streak strikes again – or as I like to call it, the wisdom in knowing the difference between the things I can and cannot change and the serenity in accepting that which I cannot!)

It is what my darling cousin called the ‘longest love story’, not merely because it is long winded, but because it is about a marriage and a love – both separate, though for the same woman – that last over 50 years. (I found the commentary surprisingly succinct for such a long-lasting emotion and institution), and because it presents a timeless scenario in many respects. It is a narration of a marriage case-study, leaving us to draw our own conclusions, because Marquez tends not to emphasize elaborate dialogues, preferring rather to present the background of the situation and leave the reader to draw his/her own conclusions.

And the story does leave you with different emotions at different stages of the book. In the beginning I was drowning in sighs and visions of romance, nostalgic about the days (that I have never seen, only wished) in which a look or touch was enough to make one realize that one wanted to be with someone forever, for the days of lyricism in every rustling leaf, every light step, every song on the wind, for the ability to sustain a relationship for years on the basis of a couple of sentences exchanged. It’s like a period fairytale, with incredible imagery.

Then the crazy sex bits begin, that left even me quite breathless with shock. Really, we youngsters think that our ancestors’ generation was all clean and sexless just because they don’t talk about it, well, it wasn’t! Eeeeeeeeeeeeee. Anyway

Below are MY (I always find it interesting if someone reads a book at the same time as me and different passages touch them! Tells one so much about what’s on the reader’s mind and how things touch him/her differently!) picks of a few of the nuggets of wisdom and truth that I, being a victim of hindsight phenomena, belatedly gaze upon with new eyes and admit that I could not have described better (that is, with greater truth and humour):

The most absurd element in their situation was that they never seemed so happy in public as during those years of misery… Life in the world, which had caused her so much uncertainty… was nothing more than a system of atavistic contracts, banal ceremonies, preordained words, with which people entertained each other in society in order not to commit murder. The dominant sign in that paradise of provincial frivolity was fear of the unknown. She had defined it in a simpler way: “The problem in public life is learning how to overcome terror; the problem in married life is learning how to overcome boredom” (211).

That’s what life seems to be like everywhere except on bad American talk shows and “Reality TV” – don’t wash your dirty laundry in public. Don’t even SHOW that your laundry is anything but clean and virginal white. Funny how much of a pretense social/public life is. What’s the point of the hypocrisy? We’re all dysfunctional barely inside the prescribed line of normalcy.
Come to think of it, would I personally prefer a challenging/difficult life to a boring life? This requires greater discussion!

In the last analysis she preferred children, because their judgment was more reliable… Instead she was something she never dared to admit even to herself: a deluxe servant… She always felt as if her life had been lent to her by her husband: she was absolute monarch of a vast empire of happiness, which had been built by him and for him alone. She knew that he loved her above all else, more than anyone else in the world, but only for his own sake; she was in his holy service. (221).

That’s really what I complain to my mom that women are: we are unpaid individuals who get big pieces of jewelry/presents/outings to do all the housework/management imaginable. It’s a noble ideal to do everything out of love, for love, by love, but it rarely is always love… hmmm… I have confused feelings on this topic. Its like one is never given credit for anything done right, only blamed when something goes wrong. That’s no really true. Most human love is carnal, and essentially different from truly spiritual love unless it is manifested in selfless service for those you love – it certainly comprises that element of possession and territorialism. In that sense, human love is selfish.

Marquez sees the above passage with the sympathy of a man; I see this and the one below with the irony of a woman:

If anything vexed her, it was the perpetual chain of daily meals. For they not only had to be served on time: they had to be perfect, and they had to be just what he wanted to eat, without his having to be asked. If she ever did ask, in one of the innumerable useless ceremonies of their domestic ritual, he would reply: “Anything.”… But when it was time to eat, it could not be anything, but just what he wanted, and with no defects… She did not blame him: she blamed life. But he was an implacable protagonist in that life (221).

ARGH, this is soooo boring for me! Everytime my mom asks me what I want to eat at work, I hate answering, because very few things are TASTY, lasting and easy to eat! Most things have to be fresh or are leaky! I cant imagine 50 years of planning meals. And I’m soooo one of those “anything” answering people, who only works on the basis of the process of elimination!

Over the years they both reached the same conclusion by different paths: it was not possible to live together any other way, or love in any other way, and nothing in this world was more difficult than love. (223).

True… I hope to find that out without too much stirring of the waters. And I hope the goal is worth the journey! (Or, being a good Hindu, should I not expect?)

I haven’t picked any of the Florentino Ariza bits because he didn’t touch me as much: I was pretty amused/semi-disgusted with him believing his STDs to be the ‘spoils of manhood’, with his constant, and ‘typical’ (meaning stereotyped – though we all know it’s true) male hypocrisy of mental/emotional loyalty and sexual infidelity, with the ease with which he lied about his virginity, with his nymphomania (in fact, I referenced him in this earlier post).

All in all, it’s a good read. Is it a classic? Well, in terms of the wisdom it esoterically offers, yes. In terms of the period it describes and the sweep of events vaguely present in the background, of, the irrelevance of war and disease to one unless it personally touches one’s life that is lucidly covered here, yes. In terms of its lyrical prose? Certainly. Will you need a dictionary? Yes.

But it’s up to you to decide. I think there was only one point in which I was in tears… when Urbino dies in a fall and he holds on to life till his wife gets to him, to tell her “God only knows how much I loved you”. SNIFF.

Maybe the journey is worth it after all, even if the reward is only to be received upon death.