Of Love and Other Demons

Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites
Review: "Of Love and Other Demons" has been reviewed as "not one of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's best", perhaps because the themes are concluded in a manner that is not as concise as his other novels, and so the conclusion is not as fulfilling as one would like. However, it is still one of my favorite books.

Even though Garcia Marquez's classic, "One Hundred Years of Solitude", may be more epic in scope, this novel is a much quicker read and is less intimidating for the Gabriel Garcia novice. The prose is lyrical and is filled with subtle irony. As in many of Garcia Marquez's other novels, it has elements of magic realism and the ending of the story is told before it even begins (in this case in the prologue); by using that plot structure, Garcia Marquez exhibits his skill as a writer, not by using surprise endings, but though the unexpected path he takes to get to his ending. The portrayals of the characters are done with delicate details; it seems as though Garcia Marquez "loves" his characters and understands their perspectives. Garcia Marquez creates a portrait of a vibrant and wild girl, who is loved by no one in her immediate family. She becomes bitten by a rabid dog and therefore demonic possession is suspected. The way in which her family and her community handles her suspected affliction shows glimpses of other possible "real" demons--the hurtful things that humans to do each other. While the little girl, Maria de Todos los Angeles (Maria of All the Angels), is subjected to tortuous "healings," the novel draws small glimpses of each character's life that revolve around the main themes of love and other "demons" such as hatred, illusion, lust, superstition, racism, greed, etc. Balancing all of these base emotions out is love, which is commonly said to conquer all.

Garcia Marquez wrote in this book, "Ideas do not belong to anyone . . . they fly around up there like angels." (p 54) That Carl Jung-like collective unconscious idea maybe or may not be true, however there are not many authors that have been able to capture ideas and words like Garcia Marquez.

Rating:
Summary: GABO, AT HIS BEST, REJOICING IN MAGIC REALISM
Review: A tropicalized Abelarde-et-Heloise-like story, in which a rabies epidemic is confused with diabolic possession. A beauty of Spanish + African ancestry, already incubating rabies, is pursued by a monk who was in his way to become a saint. Both the young woman and the monk fall for each other with a passion that challenges State and Church, the latter intent in destroying them through its instrument of terror, the Inquisition. They cannot win, of course, but they shake both structures. Her hair does not stop growing even after death. The description of the estate of the decrepit Marquis and his love/hate relationship with his un-titled spouse of mixed origin are only surpassed by GABO himself in his Autumn of the Patriarch.

Rating:
Summary: An unforgetable novelette
Review: An absolutely incredible short book that takes you into a world of mystery, love,cruelty, superstition and relationships in the colonial period of Latin America between the church and state. The editorial reviews give a good summary of the plot but there is so much more to a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. The author has an uncanny ability to draw the reader in very close to the characters lives, participating in the unfolding story, empathizing with the trials and tribulations and being an active participant in the story that is unfolding. The story is void of any plot complexities which allows the reader to become emotionally involved with the characters for a gut wrenching experience. The story reveals the relationships within a multuicultural colonial society, the mistrust of African ancestry by the church and the resulting deeper bond that is created by the suppression of beliefs. The interaction by the characters is super. When Sierva Maria is confronted by the Abbess, who represents the oppresive church in her cell, the result is full of rich imagery as the heroine takes on her captors while captive and literally all hell breaks loose. This plus her special bond with others as she sings makes the Abbess further believe that she has supernatural powers. They even ludicrously assert that she has wings. This story from the imagination of Marquez reveals the demented views of the Inquisition and the lengths it would go to to keep Christianity in the New World free from foreign traditions. Inspired by family legend and an editorial assignment to write about a burial crypt uncovered in an old convent, Marquez delivers a story not to t be forgotten. Less dense than some of his other works, this book is a good starting point or a place to reaquaint oneself with one of the best writers Latin America has produced. Recommended for anyone interested in Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Latin American literature or historical novels. Most people will find that this little book delivers a story for the ages.

Rating:
Summary: An unforgetable novelette
Review: An absolutely incredible short book that takes you into a world of mystery, love,cruelty, superstition and relationships in the colonial period of Latin America between the church and state. The editorial reviews give a good summary of the plot but there is so much more to a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. The author has an uncanny ability to draw the reader in very close to the characters lives, participating in the unfolding story, empathizing with the trials and tribulations and being an active participant in the story that is unfolding. The story is void of any plot complexities which allows the reader to become emotionally involved with the characters for a gut wrenching experience. The story reveals the relationships within a multuicultural colonial society, the mistrust of African ancestry by the church and the resulting deeper bond that is created by the suppression of beliefs. The interaction by the characters is super. When Sierva Maria is confronted by the Abbess, who represents the oppresive church in her cell, the result is full of rich imagery as the heroine takes on her captors while captive and literally all hell breaks loose. This plus her special bond with others as she sings makes the Abbess further believe that she has supernatural powers. They even ludicrously assert that she has wings. This story from the imagination of Marquez reveals the demented views of the Inquisition and the lengths it would go to to keep Christianity in the New World free from foreign traditions. Inspired by family legend and an editorial assignment to write about a burial crypt uncovered in an old convent, Marquez delivers a story not to t be forgotten. Less dense than some of his other works, this book is a good starting point or a place to reaquaint oneself with one of the best writers Latin America has produced. Recommended for anyone interested in Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Latin American literature or historical novels. Most people will find that this little book delivers a story for the ages.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Prose - Pessimistic World View
Review: As a published novelist, I can't help but marvel at Marquez's skill with imagry. Anyone new to his work should start with this novel.

Rating:
Summary: Marquez weaves another mythic world that leaves me entranced
Review: Book Review Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, edited by Edith Grossman As usual, Marquez weaves a fantastic tale, one filled with magic and miracles. And, as usual, I am captivated, putting aside my scientific beliefs, my rational analysis for a tale that sweeps me up in the history of the times by bathing the tragic illness and death of the child Sierva Maria De Todos Los Angeles in love, mysticism and seduction. This tale hinges on very usual circumstances for the times: in 1949 the author worked for a newspaper in Columbia and, on a slow news day, the editor asked him to take a trip to the Convent of Santa Clara to watch the emptying of tombs in an effort to scare up some news. Upon his arrival, Marquez was dumbfounded to find a small crypt above the altar filed to overflowing with red hair which, when stretched out on the floor, measured 22 meters, eleven centimeters. This hair, the remnants of Sierva Maria De Todos, was the mark of her beauty when the twelve year old child was alive and the mark of her sainthood after she died from rabies soon after her twelfth birthday. Many came to pray to the niche, hoping for blessings from the young saint and from this tale Marquez constructed his story of her life. We meet Marquez's Sierva Maria on her twelfth birthday when she is roaming the market with her servant and, upon roaming too far, gets bitten by a dog above her ankle. Later, when that dog is found dead, Sierva Maria's downfall begins as every unusual trait of hers is attributed at first to the illness and later to demonic possession when she does not actually fall ill from the bite. Added to this central drama is the negligence of her parents, Bernarda Cabera and the Marquis de Casalduero, due to her mother's drug addiction and her father's apathy. Sierva Maria, however, is not totally without guidance, for her servant has taken her in, raising her in the slave quarters amongst the African slaves. It is to this family that Sierva feels a kinship, a bond which makes her want to sleep on her surrogate mother's floor rather than in the sumptuous quarters laid out for her in the mansion. It is behavior gleaned form these surroundings--stealth, silence and 'invisibility'--that cause those in the town to believe in her possession. Once Sierva Maria is believed to be possessed the rest of the story unfolds in the Convent to which she is taken to determine her spiritual state. She is entrusted to the ministrations of a priest, haunted with his own phantoms, who ceases to reason when he is struck with her beauty. Through his humanity, and her otherworldliness, tragedy strikes. Although this story is about a young girl accused of possession, I really see it as a story of the 'other' in society. Since Sierva Maria is raised by the slaves of the mansion she is different, appearing wholly other. With her father's fear of being murdered in his sleep by the slaves, and her mother's deep obsession for a slave man she bought for her sexual pleasure and lost in a brawl, Sierva Maria is a bridge between the worlds of black and white, captive and master, earth and God. She functions as the reader's direct line outside the system of her society which included the possibility of demonic possession, the acceptability of owning slaves, the chastity of priests and the cruelty of nuns. I found this book to be a window into passions and fears that still haunt me as I write about it. Of course, I am an avid Marquez fan, having read almost all of his novels, but this most recent one strikes me as the most mythic, blending fact and fantasy seamlessly into one believable reality. And I, for one, am convinced.

Rating:
Summary: Magical, rich, bittersweet like the best chocolate cake
Review: Even if you are like me and do not tolerate most love stories, you will savor this one. The author coaxes the reader into the book with a preface describing the excavation of an ancient nunnery during which is found the skull of a young girl whose copper hair continues to grow. The novel itself concerns the somewhat sickly, neglected child, Sierva Maria who is considered to be possessed by demons after having been bitten by a rabid dog. At her birth, her father, the Marquis, makes a deal with the Virgin Mary that if the child lives, her hair will not be cut until she is married. Her demonic possession, however, makes it unlikely that her hair will ever be cut. [The book's preface creates a curiosity within the reader to discover what happens to Sierva Maria.] As a result of her dog-bite/demonic possession, she is sent to a convent that is to prepare her for exorcism. Here, she falls in love with the priest who is to perform the task, and he with her. The story is touching and humorous, especially when dealing with interchurch squabbles. But the plot is somewhat incidental when compared with the magic of the words themselves. Even in translation, Marquez' writing is sublime and velvety, a treat for the sweet-tooth of the mind. It is the writing itself, rather than the action of the story, that propels the reader to the novel's conclusion. And it is only at the novel's end that the reader realizes that she/he does care about the fate of the characters; which makes the outcome moving and emotional, even for the least sentimental among us. Find out what happens to Sierva Maria and her flowing copper hair, and enjoy rich, sweet language that drips down your mind's chin like the juice of a fat ripe mango. mmm.

Rating:
Summary: A Faulkneresque parable for the age of AIDS
Review: Gabriel Garcia Marquez is rightly regarded as one of the great storytellers of our time, and "Of Love and Other Demons" should only reinforce that reputation. The book has been translated into an elegantly readable English by Edith Grossman. This short, but dense, novel takes place in Latin America during the colonial era. The plot revolves around Sierva Maria, the daughter of a colonial nobleman, who is suspected of either having rabies or being demon-possessed. The drama of Sierva Maria and her dysfunctional, slaveowning family is complicated by the entry of Cayetano Delaura, a priest assigned to examine her case.

Garcia Marquez' insightful deconstruction of the sexual and racial anxieties of a slaveowning society is reminiscent of some of the best work of United States author William Faulkner. The use of rabies as a plot device is also fascinating, and tempts me to read this novel, in part, as an ironic commentary on our own era's reaction to the AIDS epidemic. And the novel's satirical view of religious bureaucracy adds a further layer of complexity.

Especially noteworthy is Garcia Marquez' depiction of interracial relations in colonial Latin America, and of the cultural and religious hybridization that was an important part of that world. And of course, as in all of Garcia Marquez' great works of fiction, we meet a colorful cast of almost Dickensian characters as the story unfolds. If you are interested in Latin American literature or historical fiction, you won't want to miss "Of Love and Other Demons."

Rating:
Summary: One of the best books of all times....it pierces into you.
Review: Garcia has probed deep into the complex minds of human behaviour....thier beliefs...thier stubborn practices and mass psychology. How foolhardy can people get ? How inhuman ? This book stays with you....long after you've read it. It calls for justification of those who want to life a normal life, but, are abased by those in power. And it makes you think ! Don't miss it.

Rating:
Summary: Pure, lush, fantasy, boiling over...
Review: I couldn't put this down, read it in one afternoon on a bench by the bay. Marquez has created a world entirely of his own, this isn't Columbia in the 17th Century, nor is it some dreamscape stalked by nightmarish figures. This is a tale of robust power, dealing with lust, love, sickness, transgression, madness, faith, frailty, flesh and loss. In this world presented to us, each of them swirl together until you can't distinguish them from each other. The lives of the people in the pages: the rotting, resigned father; the impassioned atheist doctor; the brilliant, doomed and tormented priest; the deluded sex-crazed mother; the drooping slaves; the vindictive nuns... and at the heart- the crimson-haired little girl as a primal force of nature- incomprehensible, vibrant, fierce... A resounding laugh in the faces of the Stoics who intoned- "Live According to Nature." The writing bursts with energy, with poetry, with blood and bile and pale venom- you can almost smell the pages sweat. Few books evoke so much with so little (it's very short, after all). This is a fine novel, an abundant and wretched dream that will possess you for as long as you immerse yourself in it.