I’m done.
I just watched the trailer for Love in the Time of Cholera. It’s quite promising. But then again trailers are supposed to be that way.
I finished the book yesterday. I was turning another ordinary page–although eager this time to find out what happens next–when I realized it was the last in the book.
Marquez’s intention for the last line was obvious, but I was not touched. Instead I felt like the story ended too soon. Bitin.
I thought the Captain and Fermina and Florentino were going to get in trouble [more than they already were] or at least construct a plan. And I also thought the two would actually get married, or Fermina’s son would get angry at their affair. (But I guess that was implied already when he realized Florentino was also joining the trip.)
Marquez definitely surprised me at that, albeit not in the way Ian McEwan did. The story should have had more to it… Besides, it seems stupid that Fermina just suddenly fell in love with him when they were older because she talked to him and realized he was something. What lesson does Marquez want to show? It would have made more sense if Fermina did really love him when she was a teenager. But if she did the whole story would become a cliche.
Florentino, on the other hand, was too stubborn to move on. You’d think that with his numerous sexual affairs with different women (and I mean different: black/white, fat/thin, married/single, etc.), he’d find someone to replace Fermina with. Or at least contract an STD for goodness’ sake!
But, whatever. I still believe in Marquez. Even if his plot for this book failed me, I liked his words and style. There’s a tone in it that makes you feel like you’re reading something so important. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t really find anything quotable, as I would have if it were Coelho I were reading. Or maybe I just couldn’t relate to some of the lines that were quotable (eg., “The important thing in a marriage is not happiness, but stability”). Oh well.
I have plans of reading his Nobel-prize winning novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, although, perhaps not anytime soon.
Toni Morrison awaits me now with her first novel.
