The oppression of religion
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In this bitter and emotional tale, G.G. Márquez exposes the `narrowness of mind' and the concomitant fanatical oppression by the Christian authorities, who put a straitjacket even on a perfectly normal child.
The history of the Christian Church is one of death, of anti-life: `The Holy Office is even worse than the witchcraft of the blacks. The blacks only sacrifice roosters to their gods, while the Holy Office is happy to break innocents on the rack or burn them alive in a public spectacle.'
Speaking here is G.G. Márquez's alter-ego, the atheist (`You can't forbid what I think') doctor Abrenuncio, a clairvoyant, not a stinking, healer: `You have a religion of death that fills you with the joy and courage to confront it. I do not. I believe the only essential thing is to be alive.'
He expresses also another recurrent theme in G.G. Márquez's work: `Sex is a talent, and I do not have it. ... Love was an emotion contra natura that condemned two strangers to a base and unhealthy dependence, and the more intense it was, the more ephemeral.'
In his characteristic imaginative and brilliantly colorful style (`the more transparent the writing, the more visible the poetry'), G.G. Márquez painted a dark world dominated by an oppressive religion, the only light coming from those who oppose it.
A must read.
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Step back and weep
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What has amazed me most about Of Love and Other Demons is that Garcia Marquez is such a good storyteller that he has made so many other readers wax lyrical about the love between a 12 year-old child and her 36 year-old paedophile priest.
Admittedly the story is written in a bygone century, when such things were more socially acceptable, by why do readers with today's morals find the story so beautiful? I give the story 5 stars for duping other readers into thinking so. Amazing.
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Marquez Scores Again - I Read It In 2 Hours!!
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'Of Love...' is only the second of Marquez's book I have read (1st was '100 Years..') and I continue to be impressed and completely engrossed by his work. To illustrate how engrossed I was --THIS BOOK TOOK ME TWO HOURS TO READ. I felt like I was reading a fairytale at bedtime to my daughter, the magic and wonder of Sierva's existence stands second only to Marquez's style of prose. I fell in love with Marquez after '100 years...' and the second visit I've paid him, will only serve to keep me coming back for more. ASTONISHING!
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A Novel that will have you Walking around in a Daze
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I can never get used to Márquez. More than anyone else he is the master storyteller, the voice of a melancholy raconteur whose aphorisms reverberate in your head and deny you sleep; but you never begrudge him this. He manages to condense the substance of entire novels into a single understated sentence. His words are alive and wriggle under your skin.
Of Love and Other Demons is one of the twentieth century’s great works. A relation of the events surrounding Sierva MarÃa de Todos los Angeles, the daughter of a Marquis raised by black slaves, it captures the miasmatic superstition of the eighteenth-century perfectly, as rabies becomes confused with satanic possession, love with sinful temptation, and rationality with madness. Much like Romeo and Juliet, you quickly forget the age of the lovers at the centre of the novel – Sierva MarÃa is twelve; Cayetano Delaura thirty-six. Like Shakespeare’s play there is nothing immoral about this relationship, but it retains the same tragic potential: the virgin daughter of a Marquis possessed by demons in a mutual infatuation with the Bishop’s favourite, an erudite priest soon to take a position in the Vatican. It is doomed from the start, as almost everything in the story is – but much like he did in Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Márquez proceeds to build excitement from inevitability, never needing to throw in a twist to keep the reader entranced, as lesser authors might. In particular he is exceptional at describing a world tinted through the vision of love, making everything richer, more sensuous. He is, for me, the greatest author alive today. Read him.
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A story one needs to read in this life.
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As ever Marques gives his reader a wonderful story but this time it seems to me that it transends his other novels. This book is so perfectly crafted, so moving in its portrayal of the main protagonists and so vivid in its desciption, that if books were to be chosen rather than music for a Desert Island, this would have to be one of the eight! I believe it to be an unforgettable read!
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