A difficult book to read. A book filled with so much imagery, overloaded with detailed descriptive prose. The setting is most probably (as it is never stated) a town in Columbia in the North Western corner of South America. The time the last few years of the 19^th century and the start of the 20^th.  The main participants are Doctor Juvenal Urbino, his wife Fermina Daza, and her admirer Florentino Ariza.

 

At its heart LITTofC is a love story and no matter how long that love takes to blossom, and whatever the obstacles, true love will always win through. But this is more than that…It is about honour, family loyalty, and above all belief, against a background of a colourful city, steamy and sleepy streets, rat infested sewers, old slave quarter, decaying colonial architecture and complex multifarious inhabitants. If a central character were to be chosen it would undoubtedly be Florentino Arizo. A successful business man, head of his own riverboat company, and always available to him a willing selection of attractive women knocking at his door. However his treatment of lovers did not always reflect a man of honour in particular mention should be made of America Vicuna. A child when she met Arizo, he was meant to educate and comfort her, instead he used his position as guardian to abuse with tragic unforgettable consequences.

 

I particularly enjoyed the closing chapters which to me was really a study of ageing, the approach of infirmities and the vital need for companionship and love even in the autumn and winter of our lives….”old age began with one’s first minor fall and that death comes with the second”……”After a long while Florentino Ariza looked at Fermina Daza by the light of the river. She seemed ghostly, her sculptured profile softened by a tenuous blue light”…”It was a meditation on life, love, old age, death: ideas that had often fluttered around her head like nocturnal birds but dissolved into a trickle of feathers when she tried to catch hold of them”……

Several stray thoughts I had while choosing the tags for this one:

 

It's not really romance-done-right. While the title is scrupulous, there is little romance to all the types of "loves" (because there is always that doubt, of what is and is not love, what is selfish use, or abuse, and whether that frontier is concrete) weaved into the tapestry of the story. Most are too real or too fantastical, or grotesque (and still real, maybe more so), and the ways they happen are written just so; with all the anxiety, the terror, hesitation, thoughtlessness, doubts, crudity or day-to-day boredom that merits the occasion.

 

Wanted to tick better-than-expected but I still don't know why I am surprised by his writing.

 

This one is not magical-realism. Actually, leaving aside One Hundred Years of Solitude , I don't know that any of his other books would fit that one. Might be the grandiose, nearly mythic proportions of the stories he pieces together in his novels.

 

 

It is an odd and frankly ambitious book. It immerses you into the story by way of an octogenarian last chapter no less, and after it wraps you in, tells you how two seventy-somethings traveled through 50 years of other loves to re-meet as lovers. It meanders through the years and the relationships, and the depictions when gathered turn into a tapestry that is nothing less than epic in scope.

 

I can't say that I truly liked any of the characters, and yet, maybe I loved them all, in their terrible intensities. They are certainly memorable.

 

As always, I take off my hat to his opening and closing sentences, to the strange feats and acrobatics he manages from the language, to the way he depicts the shiny and the rotten side by side, making something amazing and nostalgic of a nature core of reality.

Whenever I read another of his books, It's like I rediscover the weird ways he uses words and how damn good the writing paints things in your head. I don't know how well that's is captured in translation though. Like:

 

.... la ayudó a acostarse en una cama de sábanos tersas y almohadas de plumas que le infundieron de pronto el pánico instantáneo de la felicidad.

 

... porque su pretendida era la más preciada de una familia típica de la región: una cábila intrincada de mujeres bravas y hombres de corazón tierno y gatillo fácil, perturbados hasta la demencia por el sentido del honor.

 

Which are two bits from the same page.

 

Also, I love how the daily made grandiose resonates with our family legacy stories. I mean, the little tortures that culminate in an absent bar of soap that almost terminates a marriage of 30 years? A man holding a torch for 50? Dying for a parrot? Keeping an affair secret for decades just because? It hits something close to funny, like there is an implausible and grotesque air to them, but in the end you laugh because goodness, did the elders of your family have stories to share in lazy afternoons.

@Sheila_Kell, @JackieNorthMM, #Historical, #Contemporary, #MM, #Romance, #TimeTravel, 4 out of 5 (very good)

 

Soulmates across time. Two hearts that were meant to be together.

In present day, Zach takes a road trip to Trinidad to find information on a missing friend. 

In 1892, Layton Blue, outlaw, longs for hearth and home even as he treasures his life of freedom.

A freak rainstorm washes Zach's car into a ditch, sending him back to the year 1892. Searching for help, alone and on foot in the middle of the nowhere, he crosses paths with the famous Ketchum Gang. Now the gang’s prisoner, Zach’s fate is to be sold at a seedy auction for whores.

Layton is put in charge of making sure Zach does not escape, but as the chemistry between them grows, Layton finds himself wanting to help Zach. 

Can Layton overcome years of being on the run? Can Zach accept help from an outlaw?

A male/male time travel romance complete with fast rides across the desert, campfires beneath the stars, cool water in the desert, wild rescues, and true love across time.

Independent reviewer for Archaeolibrarian, I was gifted my copy of this book. This is book three in the Love Across Time series. You don’t NEED to have read the others before this one, but PERSONALLY, I think you should read book 2, Honey From The Lion before this one. There are things that happen in that book that lead up to this one. And you, know, they are really rather good! This one, I think, is my favourite of the three! Zach is looking for his friend, Laurie (Honey From The Lion) and gets caught in a freak rain storm. Waking up in 1892 and then crossing the Ketchum Gang, Zach finds himself on the way to be sold. Layton is part of the gang, but he doesn’t want to be anymore. When Zach comes along, those feelings intensify, to a point that Layton will go against the gang leader, Tom, and maybe cost him his life, along with Zach’s. But Zach makes Layton want other things, things that require them both to be alive. Can he get away, saving himself AND Zach? Like I said, my favourite of the three! What I particularly loved about this one, was the SLOW burn between Zach and Layton! I mean, I'm all for insta-love and masses of naughtiness but HERE?? I LOVED that it wasn’t like that! It creeps up on both Layton AND Zach, the feelings, the attraction (although Zach does have that instant attraction feeling) the wanting MORE than being on the run. It’s really fabulous reading, watching these two fall for each other. It’s on the less explicit side, but very proper for this book that it is. Layton, especially, surprised me! Don’t ask me WHY he did, I can’t say exactly, but that’s' how I feel and you know I like to share those book feelings. He doesn’t really question what he starts to feel for Zach, at all, and being of a begone age, I would have thought that he might. I’m not complaining, . . . .oh! THIS is why he surprised me! The fact he doesn’t question, he just lets himself begin to fall, and fall hard. I loved that, right from the start, Layton wanted away from the gang, from the leader, Tom. Tom has a vicious streak a mile wide, and both Zach and Layton fall foul of his wrath. Not nice reading, but I think, it really is needed. This is why I tagged it darker, cos Tom is not a very nice person, but then again, stagecoach hijackers and robbers don’t tend to be! He really is a nasty piece of work. I love love LOVE the way Honey from The Lion melds itself into this one! Trying NOT for spoilers, so other than that, I’m not saying how, but very well played there, Ms North, VERY well played! I want to tag this book warm and fuzzies and too stinking, but not sure how I can with the darker tag! Such decisions! Ah stuff it, tagging it as so! Are there more? I don’t know, I want to read them, regardless. Loving them! 5 full and shiny stars **same worded review will appear elsewhere**