Book Review - Love In the Time of Cholera

There's nothing I love more than a cup of coffee and a good book to start the day.  What I really hate, though, is starting a book and realizing that I'm not going to like it...then sticking it out until the end (just in case something brilliant happens), only to realize I should have quit after a few pages. 

Spoiler Alert:  I will discuss details about the plot, ending, etc.  If you plan on reading this book (which I don't really recommend), then skip over this posting.

This was one of those books that I had to force myself to read.  Once I start a book, I finish it no matter what, and this one was a real test of commitment.  The chapters were super long, with little dialog, and even though it was well written and descriptive, it wasn't enough to make up for the shortcomings.

I couldn't relate to and didn't really care about the main characters...especially the male lead, Florentino Ariza.  This guy spends 50+ years of his life pining away for a woman that shuns his love at the age of 20.  He spends the majority of his life screwing everything in site, even his 15 year old relative, who he seduces when he's in his 70s (gross, right?).  Later, he shuns the young girl when his old flame suddenly becomes available, and she goes into a deep depression, fails classes in school, and commits suicide.  Meanwhile, Florentino is on a never ending romance cruise with his old flame and doesn't have to suffer any consequences for destroying the girl's life.
   
Florentino just seems pathetic to me.  He spends his whole life working hard to move up in his job and create a respectable home for the off chance that his lifelong love will become widowed and spend the remainder of her life with him.  I just couldn't get behind this.  If I were Fermina Daza, I wouldn't have been the slightest bit interested either, especially if I knew that he was spending the majority of his time fucking anything with a pulse.  At the end, when he finally has the opportunity to seduce and Fermina, and they fall in love, he tells her he's a "virgin" because he's never been with anyone that he loved.  Forget the 600+ women he slept with throughout his life...that wasn't love so it doesn't count.  Really, this book should have been titled "Sex in the Time of Cholera."  This book is a best seller and one of Oprah's recommendations, but it just wasn't for me.