What I've been reading lately

My summer reading has been interesting--I picked these books from the book club shelf at the public library, and surprisingly there are some commonalities between them.
The most recent is Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is a book about love that lasts for decades,, but isn't requited until the last chapter. The two main characters--one, Fermina Daza is an attractive character, the other Florentino Ariza, I didn't find as likable. It is set in a country--its name is not mentioned, but I assume that it is Columbia, about 100 years ago. What I found so interesting is that the love affair was based at first on letters. The lovers--Fermina and Florentino rarely meet or speak, but their relationship was built on letters they wrote to each other as teenagers. Later in life, the relationship is rekindled by letters. Today, people rarely write letters, let alone love letters, and having a relationship with a person that you rarely see or speak to is almost unheard of. The story covers over 50 years of the characters lives--so there are long periods when there is no contact between them. Yet, Florentino keeps his love for--or obsession with Fermina alive, putting that part of his life on hold. She, however, forgets about him, and lives a normal and happy life as a married woman.
The second book I read is Gatsby's Girl, by Caroline Preston. I was expecting a light read--but was surprised to find that there was more to this book than to your average summer read. It is about Giverva Perry, a character who is based on Giverva King, a young woman who was romantically linked to F. Scott Fitzgerald. She is the woman on whom he based Daisy Buchanan and several other characters in his novels--thus the title, Gatsby's Girl.

How is this book linked to Love in the Time of Cholera? By letters! Ginerva and Scott met briefly-- for an evening, in St Paul Minnesota, when they were teenagers. Later they met a several more times, but only for a few days. Their relationship was based on love letters, which were long, romantic and frequent--like those between Fermina and Florentino. It seems that both relationships had huge elements of fantasy in them--each with an idealized image of the other person. Both women kept the relationship going in their imagination--and Fitzgerald used his memories to construct several characters Both women quickly tired of the man, and married others. The author, Caroline Preston did a lot of research on Fitzgerald and Ginerva King, so her characters are believable, and the book has the feel of a biography.

The third book, The Memory Keepers Daughter, by Kim Edwards, has a much smaller connection to Gatsby's Girl. The daughters of both main characters are named Phoebe. I will write about this book in another entry.