A very special guest review by my lovely friend Bruno (he is SO grown-up!)

Love makes the world go round – it’s a nice thought. And when contemplating such a notion it’s also nice to have a book in front of you that reinforces the idea. However, in the case of one character from Love in the Time of Cholera it could almost be ‘sex makes the world go round’. But I’m jumping ahead of myself a bit now. Backtrack.

Love in the Time of Cholera tells the story of Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza. And in case you’re worried, there’s more love in the tale than cholera, so it’s perhaps not as morbid as the title suggests. Fermina and Florentino live on an unnamed Caribbean island at the turn of the century. She’s a feisty though somewhat unsure vision of gorgeousness, and he’s a slow but steady unassuming type. Outward appearances could suggest the hare and the tortoise, but in many ways the book is about what happens behind closed doors, and metaphorically speaking that includes perception versus reality when it comes to the characters and their private lives.

The title of the book could almost be Unrequited Love in the Time of Cholera, for the majority of the tale sees Florentino carrying a torch for Fermina that she blatantly refuses to acknowledge. She doesn’t try to put the torch out, because to her it doesn’t even exist. We follow their lives for fifty years, or thereabouts, and because the story see-saws between these two characters and their very different experiences, it remains constantly engaging.

Written in a ‘warts ‘n all’ style, we often see the people and the places at their most base. However, this is contrasted with flowery, almost poetic prose that gives even the most unpleasant of events a sort of fatal romanticism. The book also feels older than it really is. First published in 1985, it harks back to the style of the classic romance novels, though there’s also enough spice to keep the modern audience engaged. There is sex in the world of Fermina and Florentino, and in the case of the latter it’s numerous and all out of wedlock. But it’s not gratuitous. On Dotty’s Doris Day-o-meter (zero being the sort of thing that would even put Ms Day’s feet to sleep, and ten blowing the dial off the o-meter in a super-saucy, super-cloud of super-sex steam) the book scores a solid five. It’s neither overly racy nor boringly prudish.

However, having spent the last four hundred words heaping praise on the novel, I must say the end left me a bit cold. As the story unfolds there are times when unpleasant things happen to the characters, establishing that unpleasant things happen in the world of the novel and applying a sense of mortality. I thought this was going to be carried through to the end and provide the finales’ dramatic climax. I was wrong. Though this isn’t enough to taint the story as a whole, and I’d still recommend the book if you want your world to spin a little bit faster on the axis of love.

Wow – don’t you just want to go out and buy that book? I’m getting my order in now … I’ll let you know if it does reach #5 on the Doris Day-o-meter ;-)