This story is about patience and love. How Florentino Ariza found it in him to wait for so long to have the woman he loves finally in his arms is a rather singular sequence of events, one with its heartbreaks and peculiarly human enterprises.
The characters are shown in such a unique light, so much that their personalities are so intense, they almost seem to be talking to you off-page. Ariza himself is not shown as an angelic fairytale prince; rather, he is shown as a man who, though loyal and true, has within him faults, mistakes and failures. (Let us also not forget that Fermina Daza, the woman he loves so dearly, had looked at him with disdain and disgust at more than one point of her life, due to his physical attributes.)
The story-telling is brilliant, with the incidents being foreshadowed, forgotten, brought back into light, deftly mixed into other realities, and finally: being given way to a beautiful ending.
All in all, a lovely read.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
