Finally got a hold of it at the library (of course) and started reading it about a month ago. I know recently I've been lamenting about how long it takes me to read non-fiction, but it took me a little over a month to read this and it's fiction. The big difference here is that I purposely read this slowly. It's a story that is so deserving of your time. The story takes place over almost sixty years and it's about love, life, commitment, human nature, deferred dreams, and patience. The oversimplification of the plot is this: boy falls in love with girl, girl seemingly falls in love with boy, girl's father rejects boy, girl then rejects boy, boy waits patiently for fifty-plus years to once again express his undying love for girl.
The book spans the lives of these two individuals as they live them separately, but always with the notion of the other person coloring their thoughts directly or indirectly. The longer chapters and the span of the story practically implore you to take your time reading and absorbing the details. There are so many layers to the story, I can't even begin to dissect it or it would turn into a PhD dissertation. Marquez writes beautifully, lyrically. Even when a character does things that may seem deplorable, you can't help but feel empathy and sadness for the pitiful state of affairs. Sometimes when I was reading the book, I thought about Lolita. That was another book in which the writing is so beautiful that regardless of what happens in the story, you have to continue reading. In the end, the book makes you seriously think about love, life, death and what defines each of those ideas.
