LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

i'm in the midst of this one and i'm not sure how i feel about it yet. it's goo-ood, but, eh.... so i guess that's how i feel about it. i think i'm just not used to the writing style of latin/spanish flavor. this book has the air of this other book i started to read a couple of years back - noli me tangere by jose rizal, who of course is the filipino national hero and who had written the original work in latin, i believe.

the style is slow and descriptive which i liken to the thick, humid, sticky heat of summer of certain lands (like the philippines). it's like a three hour siesta on a moist, molasses mid-afternoon. like a dusty old ceiling fan sputtering like someone suffering from consumption... languid mosquito nets and yellowed newspaper piles...

a bit about the plot is in order, i suppose...well, it's love in the time of cholera. but the cholera just happened to be the disease of the era and it's the nom de plume for the real disease, this hallucinatory, brain-liquefied concept of love. i think. but i've yet to sort out this not-quite-allegory.

update: 1/23/06
finally finished love in the time of cholera, oh, let's say a couple of weekends ago, cuz i can't really remember.

i just don't know... i can't seem to find the idea of 50+ years of unrequited love being fulfilled after having been marred by the taking on of hundreds of lovers in effort to temper the hunger. and i don't buy 'he loved her, or her too, in a different way.' no wonder it's choler-ic.