The magic realism author
Gabriel García Márquez captures in this book a beautiful story of the perseverance of a frustrated
love. Florentino Ariza falled in the nets of love, he''s only 18 years old, and he''s obsessed with Fermina Daza, a tall and beautiful young lady that he uses to see when she going to school.
After fighting her resistance and with the help of Fermina''s aunt, Ariza begins a courtship with letters and serenades, and afterwards, a platonic romance, because the social restrictions and Fermina''s pride go against any contact between the lovers.
When Fermina''s father finds out the relationship, he forces Fermina to travel, and visit her cousin Hildebranda for a long season, far from Florentino, but he works at the telegraph''s office, so, he could keep in contact with her.
When Fermina comes back, she confronts the idealized image of her lover with the real Florentino, and she leaves him without any explanation.
A few months later she marries to doctor Juvenal Urbino and joins the high society, going away from this insignificant man that she made bigger in her dreams and though she loved.
Florentino dedicates fifty years to be an honorable man, just to deserve her love. His willpower makes him the manager of the Caribbean Fluvial Company, a very important position in the city. His life is dedicated to see the changes of Fermina through the years, express his passion in unestable relationships and express his love through letters that he wrote for others by other''s assignments. Only a though keeps him alive: Juvenal Urbino will die later or sooner before him.
The day has come, Juvenal Urbino died and Florentino Ariza has the door of oportunity open for him. He became a learned and nice man, and he retakes the expression of his devotion with new letters even more passionate that the youngest ones, to try to conquer oldest Fermina''s heart.
A beautiful story that relates the perseverance of a love that goes ahead from death, anchored to hope. With his magistral narrative,
Gabriel García Márquez takes us in a magical trip to the Cartagena of the begginings of twentieth century, taking us from the splendor to the decadence, from youngness to oldness, and from the wish to the reality in an interesting trip through the city and the soul of his residents, with his crude and poetic realism.