Marquez's Tapestry

Verbose, overtly descriptive with meagre smatterings of dialogue, irritating flashes forwards and backwards through time, an annoying amount of foreshadowing, inhumanly long paragraphs leading to chapters of unholy length and what is surely the death blow for a love story: Unlikeable Romantic Leads (She's Cold, He's Creepy)-By all accounts, this reader should have hated Love In The Time Of Cholera.

But surely, slowly and insidiously, Marquez worked his magic, reeling me in when I had no idea of being hooked, an Omniscient narrator not so much creating a world, but convincing me that one exists and inviting me to partake of it's peoples' lives and loves as they live through a change of century, civil wars, modernisation and the titular epidemic.

Our last book club read was Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in The Time of Cholera, and I'd like to point you in the direction of this review on our member KayKay's blog.

I think I have a problem with Marquez. I can acknowledge that he's a wonderful writer and find a delight in the humour, colour and detail. But when I read him I feel as if I have been sucked into a huge and overcoloured tapestry where we are expected to appreciate each stitch. The prose is so cloying he gives me a headache. This isn't my thing. I run screaming for simpler, more straightforward prose.

But KayKay - a lover of the fast-paced thriller - constantly surprises me in his responses. And this is the great thing about book clubs - you let yourself be surprised by books that you would perhaps not have chosen yourself.

Of course the film of the book is now out :