Having previously read One Hundred Years of Solitude I was slightly disappointed by Love in the Time of Cholera and I’m struggling to pin down exactly why. It may have been due to my expectations, the writing, the subject matter or the translator, I’m just not sure. Maybe it was a combination of all of those.
Set in an unnamed city (though quite obviously it is Cartagena) on the Caribbean coast of Columbia, this is a haunting tale of love in many different guises: requited and unrequited, casual and devoted, obsessive and habitual, loyal and disloyal, youthful and aged, tender and for profit (emergency love as Marquez describes it!). It is quite extraordinary that Marquez manages to cover so many aspects of love in such a relatively short book and with only 3 main protagonists. And in this and the subtle, sad beauty of the writing I can find no complaint. I did have a problem with how those main protagonists changed over time particularly towards the end of the book; I just found some of those changes to be a little implausible. But otherwise it was a beautiful story of love set against the faded glory of a disappearing world with an everlasting though remote civil war.
Throughout the book Marquez keeps changing tracks, shifting from one person’s story to another’s, frequently done so subtly that it’s hard to even notice it has happened. The narration is a friendly intimate third person – it talks not about the city but about our city – and it will run along for pages and chapters telling the story of, and from the perspective of, one protagonist and then, sometimes even mid paragraph, it will slide off, almost imperceptibly, to follow the story of a different protagonist as their two stories intersect. And whilst that my sound odd, off-putting even, to some readers, it is done so subtly and naturally that the reader barely notices. It’s as if the story is ready to move onto a new thread but without being ready for a new chapter.
So what of my problems? First my expectations. I picked this book up expecting a book of magical realism, as was One Hundred Years of Solitude, and, whilst the writing itself may have been magical in style, there are no magical or supernatural elements in this book; there are no flying carpets, no yellow butterflies or saints ascending to heaven. This is not One Hundred Years of Solitude and this is not magical realism; hence my disappointed expectations.
Then there was the writing. Although there were passages of beautifully evocative prose, I didn’t find it consistent and at times some of the metaphors, that Marquez uses so liberally, simply flew over my head which in turn pulled me out of the story. However it may be that I’m being a little unfair to Marquez here; it may be that the problem is with the translator. I noticed that Marquez’s books are mostly (all?) translated by just two different translators. One Hundred Years of Solitude, whose prose I loved, was translated by Gregory Rabassa whilst Love in the Time of Cholera was translated by Edith Grossman. So maybe my problem was not really with Marquez’s writing but with Grossman’s translation. Or maybe it’s just the subject matter; I’m not a great one for reading books about love even if they are as well constructed as this one.
Whatever the actual reason, I struggled with this book in a way that I didn’t with One Hundred Years. I enjoyed it but, despite its obvious qualities, it just failed to meet my expectations.
Edit: As I little postscript I should warn that some of the 'love' in this book is deeply disturbing, with rape and paedophilia both included.
Set in an unnamed city (though quite obviously it is Cartagena) on the Caribbean coast of Columbia, this is a haunting tale of love in many different guises: requited and unrequited, casual and devoted, obsessive and habitual, loyal and disloyal, youthful and aged, tender and for profit (emergency love as Marquez describes it!). It is quite extraordinary that Marquez manages to cover so many aspects of love in such a relatively short book and with only 3 main protagonists. And in this and the subtle, sad beauty of the writing I can find no complaint. I did have a problem with how those main protagonists changed over time particularly towards the end of the book; I just found some of those changes to be a little implausible. But otherwise it was a beautiful story of love set against the faded glory of a disappearing world with an everlasting though remote civil war.
Throughout the book Marquez keeps changing tracks, shifting from one person’s story to another’s, frequently done so subtly that it’s hard to even notice it has happened. The narration is a friendly intimate third person – it talks not about the city but about our city – and it will run along for pages and chapters telling the story of, and from the perspective of, one protagonist and then, sometimes even mid paragraph, it will slide off, almost imperceptibly, to follow the story of a different protagonist as their two stories intersect. And whilst that my sound odd, off-putting even, to some readers, it is done so subtly and naturally that the reader barely notices. It’s as if the story is ready to move onto a new thread but without being ready for a new chapter.
So what of my problems? First my expectations. I picked this book up expecting a book of magical realism, as was One Hundred Years of Solitude, and, whilst the writing itself may have been magical in style, there are no magical or supernatural elements in this book; there are no flying carpets, no yellow butterflies or saints ascending to heaven. This is not One Hundred Years of Solitude and this is not magical realism; hence my disappointed expectations.
Then there was the writing. Although there were passages of beautifully evocative prose, I didn’t find it consistent and at times some of the metaphors, that Marquez uses so liberally, simply flew over my head which in turn pulled me out of the story. However it may be that I’m being a little unfair to Marquez here; it may be that the problem is with the translator. I noticed that Marquez’s books are mostly (all?) translated by just two different translators. One Hundred Years of Solitude, whose prose I loved, was translated by Gregory Rabassa whilst Love in the Time of Cholera was translated by Edith Grossman. So maybe my problem was not really with Marquez’s writing but with Grossman’s translation. Or maybe it’s just the subject matter; I’m not a great one for reading books about love even if they are as well constructed as this one.
Whatever the actual reason, I struggled with this book in a way that I didn’t with One Hundred Years. I enjoyed it but, despite its obvious qualities, it just failed to meet my expectations.
Edit: As I little postscript I should warn that some of the 'love' in this book is deeply disturbing, with rape and paedophilia both included.
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