King Arthur Movie Tristan

title: Eva is Inside Her Cat

author: Gabriel García Márquez

genre: short story fiction

source: http://www.americanliterature.com


first line: ALL OF A SUDDEN SHE NOTICED that her beauty had fallen all apart on her, that it had begun to pain her physically like a tumor or a cancer.



I first discovered Gabriel García Márquez and his beautiful prose when I read Love in the Time of Cholera. However, as much as I was taken in by his wonderful writing I disliked the characters in Cholera.

I had the same kind of experience reading this short story, the writing was captivating, yet the story was creepy and depressing.



In the short story Eva is Inside Her Cat, Eva has dreams of being ordinary.


Apparently her beauty is a burden and she likens it to 'tiny insects' who live under her skin. As the story goes you see that the narrator Eva, was mentally ill and has committed suicide. Her story is being told after her death.

Those insects didn't belong to her. They came, transmitted from generation to generation, sustaining with their tiny armor all the prestige of a select caste, a painfully select group. Those insects had been born in the womb of the first woman who had had a beautiful daughter. But it was necessary, urgent, to put a stop to that heritage. Someone must renounce the eternal transmission of that artificial beauty.

After Eva's suicide she is still not free, her spirit is in limbo. When she realizes she is dead, she starts to crave an orange. A man is buried under an orange tree outside Eva's home and she is both drawn to the oranges and repulsed by them, thinking that the man is somehow a part of the oranges since his decaying body nourished the trees.



Eva decides to possess the house cat so she can have a body in which to be able to eat the oranges. When Eva realizes her spirit is inside her cat, she looks around she sees only arsenic covering everything in her home. She realizes two thousand years have passed since her suicide and she is still stuck inside her cat.

Why didn't it dawn right then and there or why didn't she die once and for all? She had never thought that beauty would cost her so many sacrifices.

As I said Márquez writing always grabs my attention. When I first began reading Eva is Inside Her Cat, I didn't think it would be a depressing story about a woman who has been dead for two thousand years and has been craving oranges and mourning the curse of her beauty, yet the story piqued my interest from the start.

The story has a lonely and desperate feel to it, especially when Eva comes to realize that she is already dead. Márquez does a great job conveying Eva's anxiety. I think his writing has a touch of genius to it and this makes me a fan of his work.

But at every moment something was vibrating in her, a shudder that ran through her, overwhelming her, making her aware of that other physical universe that moved outside her world. She couldn't hear, she couldn't see, but she knew about that sound and that sight. And there, in the heights of her superior world, she began to know that an environment of anguish surrounded her.

Gabriel García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century.

title: Love In The Time of Cholera

author: Gabriel García Márquez

pages: 348

published: 1988

genre: Latin-American fiction

first line: It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.
















rated: 4 out of 5 (for an interesting plot)









'Love in the Time of Cholera' is one of the most unique books I've ever read. It's not quite what I expected. When I first started reading, I was expecting a love story and the start was a bit 'off' for me. But then I kept on reading. After about 50 pages, the love story began.



The story takes place somewhere in the Carribean.
The book starts off with the story Dr. Juvenal Urbino and his wife, Fermina Daza. The elderly couple have been married a long time when Dr. Urbino falls to his death.



Florentino Ariza, a man in his 60's now, comes to the funeral, and faces Fermina to tell her he still loves her after all these years.
Florentino met Fermina and fell in love with her some 51 years ago.




Then the love story about Florentino and Fermina begins. The author takes you back to when they first met.
Florentino delivers a telegram to her father one day, and sees Fermina for the first time reading with her Aunt. Fermina lives a very sheltered life and he winds up watching her from a distance every day. She and her Aunt notice his attentions and eventually Fermina develops feelings for him as well.


Florentino writes her a love letter.

'Even when he observed her, unseen, during those days of longing when he waited for a reply to his first letter, he saw her transfigured in the afternoon shimmer of two o'clock in a shower of blossoms from the almond trees where it was always April regardless of the season of the year.'

The two write love betters back and forth for over 2 years, before Fermina's father finds out and takes her far away.

By the time they return home, she is 17 years old. She and Florentino found a way to communicate through telegrams while she was away. And now, they plan on marrying.
You also learn the story of how Fermina met her husband, Dr.Urbino.




I liked that there's love letters involved. Florentino even ends up writing them for other lovers who can't come up with ideas of their own. He also winds up writing a book of love letters.



I both liked and disliked this book. It was hard for me to give it a rating, because I really disliked Florentino. It's the first time I've read a book and had a strong dislike for one of the main characters like this. He is a pervert.




This is a story about unrequited love. But the story also grossed me out, for lack of a better expression. I didn't like Florentino at all. At first I thought he was this great romantic, and I wanted Fermina to want him. But as the story goes on, you see he is nasty. I won't give away too much, but if you read it, you'll see what I mean. I lent this book to my sister in law and she felt the same way about Florentino. He's kind of creepy and even reminded me of a stalker. Also the way he is described in the book is not attractive at all. He has black greasy hair plastered to his head, wears wire rimmed glasses, is very skinny, wears all black, and drinks tons of strong black coffee all day long.




The storyline is full of drama. But beware of the icky parts. There's plenty of O-M-G moments. This is my first and last time reading Gabriel García Márquez.



I'm kind of torn in my review here, the love story is good, but the oddities were a bit much. I found I kept on reading just to see how the story ended more out of curiosity than anything else.



One thing I really liked what that Gabriel García Márquez writes the story like poetry at some parts. It was beautiful to read some passages.

'It was the year they fell into devastating love. Neither one could do anything except think about the other, dream about the other, and wait for letters with the same impatience they felt when they answered them. Never in that delirious spring, or in the following year, did they have the opportunity to speak to each other.'

About the author:



This book was first published in Spanish: 'El amor en los tiempos del cólera' by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez.


Love In The Time of Cholera was made into a movie in 2007.




I am very interested in seeing the film version of this book. I wonder how they went about putting this story on the big screen. To me, this isn't the type of book that would be good for a movie. When I see the film, I'll post a review of it on my blog as well.







This read has been part of the following reading challenges:

RRC

TBR

100+

Triple 8

New Classics