Tag: Unrequited love

Love In The Time of Cholera–book review

Love in the time of cholera, by Gabreil Garcia Marquez

Love in the time of Cholera is different to every other book I read and for that, alone, I am glad to have read it. Set across decades around the turn of the 20th Century, amid the plagues, wars and the environmental catastrophes of Caribbean Columbia, the story is of lives full of lusty passion. The thing is, I originally read this book in 1985 when it first came out and I was young and naive. Times have changed and I have changed and in the post ‘me too’ environment ‘Love in the time of Cholera’ feels like a misnomer. ‘Dysfunctional sexual obsession in the time of Cholera’ is more accurate, though not so catchy a title.

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Absolutely and Forever–book review

Absolutely and Forever, by Rose Tremain

This is a slim book about first love, and Rose Tremain is at her absolute pitch-perfect best. Oh! That aching yearning of waiting for a boy and the need to know everything about him and be with him all the time. Marianne, at fifteen, has fallen in love with Simon. Her mother says: ‘Nobody falls in love at your age, Marianne. What they get are “crushes” on people’. But her mother could not be more wrong. I can’t think of any better description of love than Marianne’s: the narcissism and obsession, the fear and frenzy of it. She’s fizzing with love.

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