So - why am I writing a piece about love? Partly because Marcela, a Columbian lady friend living down the road from me, inspired me to read about love from a South American point of view and how this point of view was very different from that experienced by an Englishman, born in 1952 and who grew up at a time when sex before marriage was rarely discussed and rarely acted upon. Statistics show that the rate of illegitimacy in England was low throughout the 50s and 60s but that should not surprise us considering that the shame for unmarried mothers was acute and often lifelong.
Times change, and the author has, hopefully, changed with them. If reading books can allow us to see the world from the perspective of others, the two novels about love recommended to me by Marcela have removed me still further from those bum-clenching, do-not-show-your-feelings 50s and 60s. The first book she recommended was "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the second was ''Tarzan's Tonsillitis'' by Peruvian writer, Bryce Echenique.
"Love in the Time of Cholera" is a picture in words in which the reader is invited to ponder on the nature of love: is it a passion or is it an illness? And in how many forms can love be experienced and, perhaps, described. Some forms may be described as depraved while others may be described as romantic and there are many others in the middle.
I found the book fascinating for a number of reasons. First, Marquez allows his characters to demonstrate how complicated love is. It is easy to be judgmental when lovers stumble and fall no matter how hard they try not to. "Love in the Time of Cholera" deals with many forms of love from the ideal to the squalid and Marquez forces the reader to question his or her notions of "good" love or "bad" love.
''Tarzan's Tonsillitis,'' by Bryce Echenique is an elegant love story involving a Peruvian singer and composer and the beautiful Salvadoran woman he worships. The two meet in Paris in 1967, when Fernanda María de la Trinidad del Monte Montes, a beautiful young woman of the upper social ranks, arrives to take up a position at Unesco. Juan Manuel Carpio is at the beginning of his career, performing in the Métro. This couple fall in love, argue and separate, but they are both painfully aware that they have missed their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The rest of the book follows their relationship through letters and the occasional meeting over 30 years and the transformation of their passion into a tender, lasting and respectful friendship. The narrator makes the following comment on the relationship.
"So what was missing? Love? Hell, no. We had that, in all shapes and sizes. From the platonic, underage love of a pair of extremely timid people to the sensual, jolly, and crazy chaos of those who sometimes had only a few short weeks to make up for, as the song says, the whole life I'd spend with you, to the love of a brother and sister born to love and help each other eternally, to the love of a pair of implacable accomplices in more than one criminal affair, and even the love of a young couple in love with love itself and the moon itself, and finally the love of a pair of old-timers still capable of frisking about on some remote island under the sun, again, as the song goes, it doesn't matter to me in what form, or where or how, but at your side. . . . In sum, yes, we had love of all shapes and sizes, but always good love, yes, absolutely, for sure."
A beautiful book that stays with you for a long time afterwards and a big "thank you" to Marcela for the recommendation. Does she have any others I might be interested in? I had better ask her.
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