Rating: 
Summary: Another demonic mess...
Review: If you don't want to know the ending stop reading right now. If you have ever read anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez you already know the ending. You also know the general plot and can describe most of the characters and their flaws. Here it is: Bored second generation aristocracy having given away all their wealth in a drunken religious stupor now lay around the decrepit old mansion in a drugged stupor and wonder why their lives suck. One of their number (the youngest girl) has a run-in with the law (the Holy Office of the Catholic Church), her uniqueness and charm being mistook for possession by demons. Never fear though, for some how her exorcist sent to kill her falls in love with her while entombed in a feces filled jail cell in a crumbling convent. Love conquers all obstacles. But wait, that's not all, for just when you start to see some light at the end of the tunnel for all our pathetic self indulgent bumbling characters (about ten pages to go) and you think something good might happen to one of them, they all start to die. Yes they all die of the same thing: A broken heart. Nobody gets the girl. Nobody rides away into the sunset. Nobody gets any kind of lesson or fulfillment. Everybody dies. After much suffering. Lonely. Alone. Dirty. Pathetic.
Along the way you have page after page of flowery descriptions of people and places. Something Marquez is famous for and you may enjoy. But there is no plot. No story. Nothing interesting happens. You close the book and wonder why the hell you bothered.
My recommendation: 100 years of solitude in your room doing jigsaw puzzles would be preferable to the excruciating pain of Love and Other Demons.
Rating: 
Summary: Humanity Possessed
Review: If you read enough in literature and history it doesn't take long to come to a conclusion about the state of man, and it is a pretty dismal picture. Since he first reared up on his hind legs and bashed in the head of some poor wretch who wasn't looking, to last year when he continued his recent practice of dropping bombs on his enemies, we come to see that the history of mankind is a sordid, neverending bloody affair. Today's entrée is about a 12-year old girl in 18th century Colombia. She is neglected by her licentious mother and weakling father and brought up by their slaves. After apparently being bitten by a rabid dog, her fearful father gives her up to the local convent. There, because of her unusual African ways, and because of her fear of the place, she is presumed to be possessed by demons, and an exorcism is ordered. Before this occurs, and for a brief shining moment, she finds love. But it is tragically fleeting, and when it ends, she becomes, again, "possessed." The exorcism takes place, and despite her wild objections, she is "cured." It's all here, presented vividly: ignorance, prejudice, stupidity, avarice, greed, pride, envy, cruelty . . . the list goes on. And the innocents suffer and suffer. It's a rather short book, only about 140 pages, and there are passages which are a little too clever, or "cute," for my taste. But it is a well-told tale and a sad reminder of all of the things that human beings were and are, and what we must strive to become.
Rating: 
Summary: An easy introduction to Marquez
Review: If you've never read Marquez and you want an easy introduction, this is the book for you. It's short, easier to read than some of his stuff, and as total an aesthetic experience as anything else he's done.
Rating:
Summary: Story of an unlikely knight and an even more unlikey damsel
Review: In this liberal era of separation of church and state, compassionate parenting and victim's rights, many situations faced in a society as rigid and superstitious as colonial South America are barely imaginable. Through the majestic, fairy-tale ambiance of Columbian master, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, however, such an environment is vividly alive in all of its cruelty, dread and heartache. The epoch is the backdrop to Marquez's Of Love and Other Demons, the story of Maria de Todos los Angeles, the twelve-year old daughter of an insecure marquis and his bitter, adulterous wife. Maria escapes her dysfunctional family life by becoming culturally assimilated by her parents' African slaves. When she is bitten by a rabid dog, she is swept up in a wave of paranoia and ignorance and confined to a monastery where she awaits her exorcism. Here, she develops an almost telepathic bond with a character who readers would not initially expect to be Maria's hero. Although he is condemned for his love for Maria, this man resolutes to save her from her miserable fate, after undergoing a moral crisis. Of Love and Other Demons is the flawlessly and lushly narrated story of an unlikely knight who sets out to rescue an even more unlike damsel in distress and contests his superstitious, traditional society for the unconquerable concept of love in doing so.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: It's a great book. I read it through a single evening, and I couldn't get asleep till I finished it. Yes, I wasn't able to say too much about it to my friend next morning. But during the day it was amazing how continuously were coming to me all the details, and more I was thinking about, more incredible and great it appeared.
Rating:
Summary: Ruined families, forbidden desires, otherworldly heroines...
Review: It's love in the time of rabies when a disenchanted
aristocrat's enchanting 12-year-old daughter is
bitten by a mad dog during a visit to a slave-port
market. Medical logic having little sway in a
cauldron of Catholic cruelty and Colombian magic,
she is confined to a convent where her supposedly
demonic fever can be safely exorcised. One look at
the copper-haired beauty, however, and the zealous
priest performing the ritual finds his own heart
bedevilled by secular passion. Ruined families,
forbidden desires, otherworldly heroines and
assorted chimerical incidents the furniture that
decorates Marquez's palatial One Hundred Years of
Solitude settle neatly into the short novel's
immaculately designed, self-contained space. His
poignant fable, dripping with melancholy and
bathed in poetic light, is mandatory reading.
Rating:
Summary: One of my best reading experiences
Review: Just finished reaing it. It only took me a couple of days,but I've only got one thing to say; "READ IT". It's really full of passion and emotions, so strong that they can easily be called breath-taking.
Rating:
Summary: Real Magic
Review: Magical women almost always characterize Marquez's works. This book is no exception. Maria, the young heroine of the novel, continuously weaves magic around her. Sometimes she's the perfect image of a girl growing into a young woman--giving in to the world's demands, sometimes even the slightest provocation elicits extreme ferocity from her, sometimes her capacity to silently endure pain baffles. The other characters--though a little less magical--nonetheless vivify the entire spectrum of human behavior, especially the extremes. The couldn't-care-less attitude of Maria's mother stands in stark contrast to the pathos of Maria's father. The inmates of the church paint a complex picture together, their individual hues adding to the complexity. Marquez loves to direct his readers' sympathies at his magical women, and here again, this book is no exception. The sheer pain that Maria has to go through might bring tears to the eyes of many a reader. No matter how intriguing she is (or perhaps because she is intriguing), readers will fall in love with Maria. And when you fall in love with a character in a novel, you no longer read it as a book; the story engulfs you. Here lies the amazing skill of the author. Though his world is so removed from the real world (magical realism or "magical unrealism" as the Booklist editor calls it), the reader becomes part of that magical world in no time. Pick up this book and escape into a world where the dividing line between the real and the unreal is thin, very thin.
Rating: 
Summary: A Magical Tale overgrown with weeds of description
Review: Marquez could not have picked a better fable to write about. The story is of a 12 year old girl who is accused of being possesed after she is bitten by a mad dog. One problem is that the book is very short. Marquez gets so caught up in the paragraphs of descriptive language that were his bread and butter in previous books, that we don't have time to fully explore the tragic relationship between the two moral fugitives. "Of Love and Other Demons" is definitely not Marquez's best, but it is worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Like a Beautiful Gift
Review: Marquez gives us a story of miracles and strange love, full of Latin drama and earthy passion. Read the synopsis in the editorial reviews if you want to see the full plot. As always, Marquez offers a unique and haunting plot with a cast of intriguing characters. He always seems to invent somewhat gothic situations but paint them with the radiant touch of an Impressionist. This book is a fine example of his skillful storytelling. As in most of his works, a bizarre series of events take place in a rotting but fascinating South American coastal province. Here, all events contribute to the tragic demise of the beautiful and cursed Sierva Maria. In any other writer's hands, the story would be heavy and overwrought. Somehow, Marzquez makes it sparkle and shine like a treasure. If you don't know Marquez, start with the flawless Love in the Time of Cholera or this beautiful, short novel.
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