Love in the Time of Cholera

It is difficult to finish a novel during school times, but alas I am done reading this one.

I picked it up since it's by the same author as One Hundred Years of Solitude (oh hey I read that almost exactly half a year ago), hoping to relive some of the magic. It did and did not live up to the expectation. In short, I loved the writing, but not so much the ending.

Some exceptionally beautiful lines:

The ephemeral splendour of another afternoon that would never return

 It was a mediation on life, live, old age, death; ideas that had often fluttered around her head like nocturnal birds but dissolved into a trickle of feathers when she tried to catch hold of them.

The light of the city had disappeared over the horizon. Seen from the darkened deck in the light of a full moon, the smooth silent river and the pastureland on either bank became a phosphorescent plain.

Usually I skip over introduction of books, wanting to get straight into the story. I decided against doing so this time and was rewarded with a far more eloquent description of Marquez's writing style than mine own. I (severely) paraphrase: when reading his books, you sense that time cease to flow. Interestingly, the plot of both books also involves "stopping" time. This makes me read at a slower than normal pace, partly why it took so long to finish. Sometimes I catch myself lingering amongst a select passage, or rereading entire paragraphs just cause.

The plot of the book, as the title suggests, revolves around love. It follows the life of 2 characters and the changes in their view on love as they age. Select quotations include:

And he felt he had the fortitude to endure forgetting.

And it was always without pretensions of loving or being loved, although always in the hope of finding something that resembled love, but without the problems of love.
And he felt he had the fortitude to endure forgetting.

And it was always without pretensions of loving or being loved, although always in the hope of finding something that resembled love, but without the problems of love.
It was the first time in half a century that they had been so close and had enough time to look at each other with some serenity, and they had seen each other for what they were: two old people ambushed by death, who had nothing in common except the memory of an ephemeral past that was no longer theirs but belonged to two young people who had vanished and who could have been their grandchildren.

He had never been so exhausted by so brief a conversation, he felt pain in his heart, and each beat echoed with a metallic resonance in his arteries.

It is incredible how one can be happy for so many years in the midst  of so many squabbles, so many problems, damn it, and not really know if it was love or not.

In the end, the two's love is requited, and that's where my problem lies.  I didn't want to see Florentiono Ariza's love for Fermina Daza to be reciprocated.
(later edit: I thought my afternoon exam is in the morning, so I have time to spare and try to explain why I didn't like the ending)
I think it has to do with very realistic characters (eg. Fermina Daza with her fickle feelings) with a very idealistic ending. In their youth, their love was abruptly ended when Fermina Daza realized that her feelings towards Florentino Ariza was not actually love (+1 realism). However Florentino Ariza persists in his love (more like obsession) for her, waits until she is widowed, and again professes his love for her. He writes a reflective letter, which imo is the only redeeming action in their entire courtship (others include stalking her throughout the city...). The letter gives Fermina Daza strength to continue living despite her husband's death, and slowly bring them together in the end. I guess this is because their view on love changed in their old age, but to myself as a reader, the ending felt discontinuous with Fermina Daza paying him no attention the all the other time. On the other hand, I suppose this is the point the book is trying to make.

The last couple of sentences of the book is very impactful though, eg.

He was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits.

Also something to think about (to distract myself from my unwillingness to figure out my displeasure with the ending) :

No one described him better than he did when someone accused him of being rich. 'No, not rich,' he said. 'I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing' 

So subjectivity aside, this book is beautifully written.