Mum read this volume in 1989, and again in 2013 – I know I first read it around the same time as Mum, and I have enjoyed it perhaps even more this time around – and I suspect because I am thirty years older, and much of the book is about the way we change as we age in every respect, including love.
This astonishing South American author is probably best known for his incredible masterpiece, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, which if you have not read, I strongly recommend you do! His work has been translated into various languages, and has not lost anything in translation – he uses prose as poetry, and the voices of his characters ring true. Sadly, he died in 2014, but his legacy of writing lives on.
So, to the book itself. It is a love story spanning a lifetime, beginning in the 1800’s, and set in a colonial town on the Caribbean coast. Beginning with the death of Dr. Juvenal Urbino as he falls from a mango tree while trying to catch a parrot, we follow the lives of his widow, Fermina Daza, and Florentino Ariza, whose ‘desolate vigil of devotion had begun half a century before…’.
Beautiful writing, an enthralling love story, remarkable insights into the culture of the region, and some marvellous side characters….there’s nothing not to love about this. It is a dense and satisfying read, one you want to spend hours reading, not just skim…or that’s me, anyway!
As always, if you’d like this volume from my Mum’s library, simply get in touch via the Facebook page or group – no cost to you, this is my pleasurable project of gifting forward Mum’s Books and sharing her love of great reads.
Happy Sunday! Becky X
Mum's Books 