Love in the Time of Cholera is #236 in the 2007 edition of 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.

Love in the Time of Cholera is one of those divisive books. People love it, people hate it. I love it, and it’s Valentine’s Day, so it’s on my mind. It’s also on The List. Bonus!

With Gabriel Garcia Marquez, you have to suspend your disbelief. His stories are crazy, epic, and bigger than a character or a character’s lifetime. “Love…” is about love at its most romantic, and at its most realistic, at the same time.  Hopeless, unrequited love is at the centre of the story and Marquez`s writing will make your heart ache. The fact that the romantic hero spends most of his time with various prostitutes and lovers doesn`t take away from it… at least for me! I think that`s where the book loses a lot of people. Either that, or the detailed, descriptive writing style. If you can just let yourself go with it, it’s so worth it.

I read it for the first time while on holiday in Radium with Jason and some friends. It was pretty early in our relationship, so maybe I was just in the right time and place to be swept away. I wonder how it would stand up to another read? Is there room for romance among the runny noses and loads of laundry? Hmm…

“To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else’s heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell.”