What the hell is up with all the praise lavished on “Love In The Time Of Cholera”?
While the prose describing the setting and background was competent and at times evocative, the central theme is not a great romance. It is, rather, just a grindingly detailed story of a vile misogynist. There’s not even an antihero vibe here; simply unremitting crimes against women, lovingly described in intimate detail, for 424 pages.
The book features stalking, rape described as lovemaking, really icky paedophilia/incest (Is there any other kind?), and streams of sex-object women and girls with barely one-dimensional characters.
This novel strikes me as nothing more than a protracted rapist’s fantasy. Half a star, for the feisty parrot alone.
YES. I found it unbelievably creepy too. The worst thing is that the main character is constantly described as acting out of love of women. Grrr.
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Well, I’ve never read it, and now have no intention to. Thanks for saving me the time and aggravation.
Agreed. I really like the style of Garcia Marquez, and I adore magical realism as a genre, but some of the themes he employs as a writer are really unnecessary (viz. Memories of My Melancholy Whores). I also liked the feisty parrot, though, and I sort of liked Fermina Daza’s character, until the very end.
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Damn book should have been called One Hundred Years of Stalkertude.
I also made the mistake of reading Tropic of Capricorn, which wins in the insufferability sweepstakes because its misogyny is in the first person.
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“Memories of My Melancholy Whores”
So the whole fourteen-year-old as ideal sex object is a recurring them. What a special snowflake he is.
zuzu: I think I read Tropic of Capricorn many years ago, and was ooked out by it. Though I seem to recall it wasn’t a patch on Ayn Rand in the ook stakes.
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