Spurned at the last minute (nicely done actually) his love for her doesn’t stop a subsequently successful sometimes unsavoury career as a “ tireless falconer“, but that unrequited love remains secretly undiminished. Then there‘s the formalised romance of Florentino Ariza, a young man and Fermina Daza, a 15-year-old girl conducted by dead letter drops. Juvenal Urbino, his esteemed friend and chess opponent – seems to lead nowhere. But the initial set-up – suicide of an old chess player and child portrait photographer, and the comic death of Dr. Sure, it is written/translated with great charm and wit. So you can imagine my delight when his Love in the time of cholera (1985 translated 1988) was September’s Book Group book. Supposedly his masterpiece, I just could not get with the flow, nor, despite all the plaudits, ultimately care enough about it for my copy to survive the charity shop cull when we last moved. What with borrowing from the public library and buying a used paperback I think I’ve failed with Gabriel García Márquez‘s celebrated One hundred years of solitude (1967, translated 1970) three times in two decades.
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