Love in the Time of Cholera

I finished "Love in the Time of Cholera" last night, if anyone here plans to read it -- or apparently there is a movie being made of it -- and doesn't want it spoiled, look away now.

I did not like Florentino Ariza in the slightest. I don't know if he was meant to be a likeable, or pityable character, but I thought he was deluded, selfish and manipulative. I didn't believe he really loved Fermina Daza -- after all he doesn't actually spend any time with her in person until Juvenal Urbino dies. I'm not sure if this is one of those things you are required to just "accept", that he does love her, but I don't agree with it. Naturally, Fermina Daza is enamoured with him when he first contacts her, she is young and impressionable and unused to the attention. But I don't believe she was in love with Ariza and fully agreed with her when she told him it had been a mistake. Ariza then continues to obsess over her for the
rest of his life and everything in his life seems to be motivated by her -- he makes a success of his life in order to be 'worthy' of her, without ever really understanding who she really is.

After his 'experience' with the woman who may or may not have been Rosalba he effectively becomes a sexual predator -- preying on the emotionally vulnerable, under the pretext that he can relieve his desire for Fermina Daza. He quickly discards the idea of staying a virgin for her -- although the idea that virginity might be more a
matter of what you choose to give up reminds me of "Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me". It also seems like he would have been happy to give up on Fermina Daza if Leona Cassiani had given in to him. I disliked how predatory he was -- and the affair with America Vicuna was almost sickening to me, especially her untimely end when he just drops her. He is responsible -- albeit indirectly -- for the deaths
of at least two people, but never seems to stop to consider his actions. Would Fermina have felt the same way, had she known how he had behaved? He even outrightly lies to her, and although she knows it she probably has little idea of the scale of the lie. Florentino then preys on Fermina -- still vulnerable after her husband's death, and seems not to have a second thought about it, so long as he gets
his own way.

I feel a lot more generous about Dr Juvenal Urbino, who genuinely seemed to care about Fermina Daza, in his own old-fashioned way -- and I like that although they didn't marry out of love his dying words were "God alone knows how much I love you". It's his relationship with Fermina Daza that I think is more representative of love -- not the obsessive and largely ignorant thoughts and behaviour of Florentino Ariza.

Maybe I will elaborate more on this later.