SOURCE: Booker, M. Keith. “The Dangers of Gullible Reading: Narrative as Seduction in García Márquez' Love in the Time of Cholera.” Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 17, no. 2 (summer 1993): 181-95.

In the following essay, Booker asserts that Love in the Time of Cholera is a more complex book than most critical readings suggest and links the novel with Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

Initial critical reaction to Gabriel García Márquez' Love in the Time of Cholera has been positive, even rhapsodic, and most readers have found the book to be an uplifting affirmation of the human spirit, the author's kindest and gentlest work. Gene Bell-Villada is typical: even while recognizing that overly romantic attitudes are sometimes the subject of satire in the book, he still concludes that Love is basically “a good old-fashioned love story” (191). Indeed, Bell-Villada goes on to applaud Garc...