Backlight

Love In The Time Of Cholera is a Nobel Prize winning novel by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, first published in Spanish in 1985. The book is set in an un-named city on the Caribbean coast over the adult lifespan of the main characters – roughly from the 1880's to the 1930's. It follows the love life of Florentina Ariza, a persistent man of romance, novels and most of all, letters. He falls in love with the other main character of the novel, Fermina Daza, during their early teens; a love that is entirely correspondence and passing at distance at public events. Unfortunately for Senor Ariza (spoiler alert) Ms Daza turns him down and marries a doctor who is prominent in the city. Thus begins the dominant dynamic of the novel – Ariza's decision to devote himself to her, to wait for his opportunity, if he has to wait for her husband to die of old age or accident if necessary. Perhaps surprisingly, Florentina Ariza avails himself of women, sexually and romantically, although he does limit his commitments. As a premise, this might sound like a yawning and protracted essay on unrequited love, and in many ways it is. I found it did swerve dangerously close to a sense of self indulgence, but there is a quality to the writing that never lets the attention drift from the story. It is detailed and clamorous, much like the sweltering days, sticky nights and the fevered passions of the protagonist. Throughout, the novel tests one's sympathies towards the lovelorn Ariza who, despite his total devotion, carries on a life of sexual indulgence that cares little for the feelings and life of those he, effectively, uses. Ariza's archaic, secretive and romantic optimism is established as an opposition to the controlled, dignified and public determinism of Fermina Daza and her husband. As the novel progresses, these two forces and approaches to life each become eroded in the face of time and the impossible progress of age. As time progresses and the characters find themselves aliens in their own city, their own society and to their own bodies, the novel brilliantly takes you from the certainties of their earlier years and their commitments, to the acceptance of time, life and even love. Not an easy novel to get through and appreciate, the style seems almost as monomaniac as the protagonist, but if you can adhere to it as he did you may find a surprising and rewarding denouement.

Let me first make it clear, I love a good historical book. A good historical book with a specific focus in mind, for example Peter Ackroyd's magnificent book on the history of London. This isn't one of them, it might be because I was reading it as a hardback rather than a paperback but it just didn't really grab me completely and utterly but in parts it was fascinating.

A history of humanity and it's growth within the Mediterranean is a hugely ambitious topic to write about. If this book had been about a specific period it would have worked but as an over-arching book it was just too cumbersome for me.

To give an idea, the first 230 odd pages go from 2200BC to 600AD. This is obviously the period that fascinates Prof. Abulafia but took me absolutely ages to get through and I'm sure I didn't understand all the various tribes and groups in this period. Whilst the period from 1830 to 2010 is dealt with in under 100 pages, an equal amount of time per period just doesn't happen and this was probably down to the editing. It just feels out of balance as a history.

Drea is definitely a person.

That might seem like an odd thing to say, but I have felt let down in the past by books with characters who have ADHD/Aspergers/autism. They either fudge the issue by not naming it or treat the character with autism as an issue to be dealt with.

Don't get me wrong, I have got a lot out of those books. But then I am a parent to two children with varying degrees of autistic spectrum disorders and ADHD; I myself have no diagnosis. 

I'm not sure I would want my children to read those books until they are more comfortable in their own skins. Because despite the best of intentions, they "other" them. 

I want them to be able to find books that have a character they can identify with, who's like them: a person whose diagnosis or disability is just a part of who they are. Neither good nor bad. This one fits the bill beautifully. 

"And as I sat there listening to that sound of the night which bop has come to represent for all of us, I thought of my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing-about"

I find it really hard to construct lists of "All-time favourites". I'm too indecisive, and my tastes shift constantly depending on what mood I'm in. I can fairly confidently say though that if I had to decide on an all-time, top 5 favourite books list, this would be in it.

Two things strike me about people's reactions to this book:

Its a Marmite book. You either love it, and are consumed by it, or it leaves you totally cold and you can't understand what all the fuss is about. I know a lot of people who read it hate the characters and hate spending time with them, and really can't get into the frantic pace of it.

People who love it tend to describe reading it in the same way. When the film came out, I went to the Tyneside Cinema's book club screening of it. In the discussion afterwards, it was amazing how similarly the people who loved it described how they read it. "It hit me like a train" or "I was knocked over by it" or "it was like hitting a brick wall" or "It stopped me in my tracks" or "I read it constantly over two days and I just couldn't stop reading".  My friend Ian says in his Goodreads review: "I tore through it, unable to put it down for two days". I've heard similar things over twitter and in conversation too.

 I don't know what I think about this book, only that I was completely caught up in it. 

For a book dealing with the subject of sexual assault, it was surprisingly ... I can't think of the right word ... "calm" is wrong, but the closest I can come up with - My emotions were engaged without ever being overwhelmed; There was a sense of being safely guided through events without ever being protected from them. 

And I loved the way Mikey and Ellie's relationship developed, despite it's Romeo & Juliet overtones. The scene where they escape everything for a day and we see experienced, street-smart Mikey's vulnerability when it comes to Ellie is beautifully done and made me sigh at the memory of that first-love rush, and the feeling of wonder that someone else could feel exactly the same about you as you do about them. Of finding out you are worth something, and more than you dared believe. 

I read this trilogy a while ago now, but it has stayed with me. So I want to share it with you.

This, the first book in the series, made me physically ache with joy, pain, hope and despair. It has the most beautiful, equal relationship at the centre of it between two, well, children really - at least by chronological age. 

The setting is kind of Sci-Fi/Western. The pioneer way-of-life, the fact that these people came together as "settlers" on a new planet, allows for Todd's strange combination of maturity and childishness, practical knowledge and social ignorance. 

In Prentisstown, there are no women, they all died over a decade before the story begins, and "Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise." Todd's struggles to filter and control the "Noise" - a world of information overload with no escape, no way to filter out or mask the unwanted thoughts and feelings except to try to hide them in plain view by putting out other thoughts to blur the "Noise" you make - made my heart go out to him.

This book found my vulnerabilities and spoke to them. 

Everyone's response to this book will be different. because this is one of those books that tells you as much about yourself as it does about the characters portrayed. Patrick Ness might well become one of my favourite authors because of his ability to do just that.

I read this book as part of a book club, but unfortunately I never made it to the book club meeting. I was looking forward to reading it- it fit in quite nicely with my current interest in learning about religions, cultures, and the effects of those of individual peoples' lives.