Read reflections

Love in the Time of Cholera and White Oleander, the former by G.G Márquez and the latter by Janet Fitch – are the two novels I read recently, I read Commencement too I’ve already made mention of that on this blog.

Even if you aren’t one for having your nose in books, the aforementioned novels are really literary luxuries and I would wager that you’d enjoy them as much as any book lover would. 

When I was nearing the end of Love in the Time of Cholera there were events in my own family that were unravelling and very identical to the story narrated in the novel, so I found that much more pleasure in it.  Márquez writes easily making use of a descriptive language that had me lusting for the same ability; vivid and visual, like you had been invited on a road trip down the lanes of the character’s lives.  I swear there were times when I’d smell the almond tree from which yellow leaves were falling and the kitchen aromas he would write about. 

It’s a love story, yes, but a love story like no other – nothing expected and nothing too sweet, almost too real, autobiographically real, only that it’s not.  And it is quite humorous too, serious when he makes mention of the local wars and the Cholera epidemic that struck – there’s poetry too and that is always a welcomed accessory.

To give you a glimpse into the two main characters’ attributes in Gabriel Márquez’ own words via the novel: Florentino Ariza, he replaces his illusory love with earthly passions, a writer of love letters and the only convincing document he is capable of writing are love documents, whenever he finds himself on the edge of catastrophe he’d need the help of a woman but what matters most throughout the story is that he is a patient man, naїve at times but unrelenting nonetheless – fifty-one years, nine months and four days to be exact.

Now, Fermina Daza, well, she knew the dark side of the moon, a woman enchanted by grief, morally qualified, stubborn and paralysed with the fear to love.

White Oleander, oh... a story of beauty, a story about a poet imprisoned and her daughter who journeys self-discovery through a series of foster homes.  It is beautifully written, you are practically pulled into Ingrid, the poetic mom, and Astrid, the artistically talented daughter’s characters.  An intriguing mother-daughter duo, one I’ve yet to come across. 

I have not finished reading it yet, but I’ve already decided that it would list as a favourite.  It deems an intelligent and an enthralling read.  There is also nothing cliché about Fitch’s writing, so the phrases are mostly refreshing and impressive.

In the words of a reviewer “...a tale of poisonous beauty, dangerous, heady scents, an unforgettable story... Its narrator is part poet, part seductress, part Scheherazade, part street punk...” she ends saying how the novel will be scorched in your memory, and lingering in your heart.  Whilst reading it, I’d recall parts of Janet Fitch’s interview with Oprah, and how in awe she was with Janet’s writing, she really was not exaggerating.  It’s that good.

Let me entice you with little excerpts, the story is first-person narrated, pg 183: 

"I took it away from her (a gift of perfume) and sprayed it over my head so the mist fell like light rain.  Wash my sins away.  Make me a girl who’d never seen the firestorms of September, who’d never been shot, who’d never gone down on a boy behind a bathroom in a park.  A nursery-rhyme girl in a blue dress holding a pet lamb in a cottage garden.  It was me, after all.  I didn’t know quite whether to laugh or to cry, so I poured some more brandy in my glass.” 

This is a favourite line from what I have read so far, 

“I’d spent the last three years trying to build up some kind of a skin, so I wouldn't drip with blood every time I brushed up against something.”

I am five chapters away from the end, so bittersweet, this is one novel I know I will read many times over, there’s just so much to take from it.  I’ve read three novels back-to-back, so the next book I pick up will be something other than fiction, I know that for sure.

Images are my own © Lucinda de Leeuw 2011