I’m nearly finished with Love in the Time of Cholera, written by Gabriel García Márquez and translated (wonderfully) to English by Edith Grossman. I’ve been ten pages from finishing for a couple weeks now—gotta love that start-of-semester madness! (But I plan to finish the book tonight.)
What is there to say about this book?
Like all other García Márquez books, its engagement with language is absolutely masterful. (And major props to Edith Grossman for bringing that state of wonder into English.) García Márquez could have written engrossing toaster oven manuals if he’d tried. While the story is interesting in its own right, I’m really sticking around for the words—for the ways he surprises me, makes me smile with a turn of phrase, knocks my breath away with a simple description.
Enough of me, though. For a taste of what I’m talking about, here’s the master himself. This is just a short little excerpt to exemplify how downright pleasant this reading experience can be. (And again, let’s stress that this is in translation! Love to all the world’s translators.)
” . . . Then she urged him to say what he meant to say, because she knew that he, or any other man, would not have awakened her at three o’clock in the morning after so many years after not seeing her just to drink port and eat country bread with pickles. She said: ‘You do that only when you are looking for someone to cry with.'”
And here’s one more fun little moment:
“Once he tasted some chamomile tea and sent it back, saying only: ‘This stuff tastes of window.’ Both she and the servants were surprised because they had never heard of anyone who had drunk boiled window, but when they tried the tea in an effort to understand, they understood: it did taste of window.”