I had a hard time picking my favourite quote for this one, but I had to go with the opening sentence of the book. It made me realise from the very first moment that this book was special, and as it progressed I realised it's the most poetic prose I've ever read.
Love in the Time of Cholera is one of those books people have recommended to me over and over again, but I've always put off. Written almost twenty years after the author's One Hundred Years of Solitude, and hailed as another great classic, this is a tale of great unrequited love. Fermina Daza and her husband Juvenal Urbino have reached a platonic stage of their relationship in their old age. When he dies after falling off of a ladder at the start of the book, her childhood lover Florentino Ariza turns up at her house at the wake.
The book then launches into the tale of this love that never quite came to be, right from the very start of their relationship. The book explores class divides and struggle in a country in South America, most likely Colombia although this is never stated explicitly. Their love can never be as Ariza is a poor man, trying to earn his way in the world but not proving very successful, whilst Fermina's father wants her to marry into an old noble family to better their social standing.
I loved this book. The author put a lot of emphasis into sensory descriptions of scenes, making them so vivid that you felt almost as though you were right there with the characters. I enjoyed the non-traditional love story narrative, and the different perspective you have in knowing from the start that the young lovers aren't going to end up together. It's a book about love in all its forms: physical, conversational, platonic, familial, sexual and even predatory.
I would really recommend this, especially if you're looking to engage more with South American literature.
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