Love in the Time of Cholera - a review

this book was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a writer who was once a Nobel prize winner, and this is the 2nd book by him that i read. the first was 100 Years in Solitude.

this book celebrates love, especially an enduring and everlasting love that lasts half a century. of course, when i first read the pages when Florentino, who's so much in love with Fermina that he falls sick and keeps on chewing flowers (that's magic realism for you) and then has his heart broken when Fermina returns after a sojourn and tells him it's over, i cried. yes, remember i'm a sucker for romance.

but having said that, i must say that reading about the 2 protagonists' lives before they are reunited, i would say that i prefer Fermina's life, because it's stable. she leads a respectable married life. i feel sorry for Florentino at first, but after Marquez wrote about the fourth mistress that he meets, i just get disgusted. i mean, come on...this guy is in love with the idea of love!

and just because the love of his life's hubby dies, he drops all his mistresses and tries hard to woo his ex fiancee back.

talk about being an opportunist.

i'm sorry, mr marquez. but i really hate your hero. i wish he has more guts. or are you trying to turn him into a Casanova?

having said that, however, i do admire Marquez's writing, because for me he is a good storyteller, and is now another favourite writer of mine, aside from Salman Rushdie.

The White Tiger : a review

this book is penned by Aravind Adiga, who is in fact, a year my junior and is an Oxford grad. it's kind of refreshing to see a younger face as the winner of the Booker Prize.

the structure of the novel is of a letter penned by the protagonist himself in the course of 7 nights to a Chinese diplomat. it is nothing extraordinary as various authors such as Mary Shelley have used such in their novels.

although like the rest of the Indian writers who won the Booker Prize (which includes my favourite Salman Rushdie) he wrote about India, Adiga has a distinctive way of presenting India to the readers - a tale of a corrupted India told by a surprisingly honest corrupted "entrepreneur" who thinks killing his employer is a virtue. and a selfish tut!, i might add. yes, it did shock me, because it is not like Rushdie's celebration of a colourful and vibrant India, Adiga addresses the true nature of men - of finding morality in every deed we do, including murder, in order to become a man.

but in the end, we see the protagonist mellowing down, having tasted success.

what do i think of the book? an okay book, although Indians are portrayed in a different way this time.