Love in the Time of Cholera

This is either an awful book, or a book about how awful people are. I'm honestly not sure, which is why I lean on the side of the former. Honestly, the horrific things done by the characters in this book, while the narrative keeps treating them as perfectly likable people. The only tragedy for which the narrator seems to express any compassion is the desolation of the river, which kind of makes me think it's a metaphor for how people ruin the most beautiful things, including love. But that seems like a stretch, an effort to somehow redeem what is simply irredeemable. "Love" in this book is anything but. It is rape, it is pedophilia, is it assault and abuse, but throughout it doesn't feel like the reader is expected to think that there is anything amiss with Florentino's conception of love.

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something important, but there were so many times throughout this book that I wanted to just put it down and never touch this vile thing again, and I don't think there was anything in the book that vindicated my decision to keep trudging on what was a dense read that took me over two months to complete, since I couldn't bring myself to read more than a couple of pages at a time.

I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but for now, I'm putting this in the "why is this considered a classic?" pile.