The Motorcycle Diaries - Ernesto "Che" Guevara

Title: The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on A Latin American Journey

Author: Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Translated by Alexandra Keeble)

Country: Argentina

Year: 2003

Pages: 175

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

First sentence: This is not a story of heroic feats, or merely the narrative of a cynic; at least I do not mean it to be.

The Motorcycle Diaries introduces us to a young Che, Ernesto Geuvara, as he travels across Latin America with his good friend and fellow Argentinian Alberto Granado. Ernesto is a medical student; Alberto a biochemist; and they pose as doctors who have worked with lepers to garner free food and lodging on their trip. They come from a life of privilege, yet they lie, beg and plead, and pay for nothing on their trip.

I wanted to like this, but I didn't. It is immediately apparent that this was largely written after Che's journey, and his reflections have a tint of retrospective bias. I wanted to hear more about the places they visited and people they met, but everything seemed glossed over too quickly. I was surprised by some of his negative remarks about indigenous Indians and those of African descent. This was one of the most defining moments of Che's early life, yet his words do not showcase the transformation that was spurred by his witness of social injustices on the journey. I was ultimately disappointed by the lack of depth of this memoir. For those looking to learn more about Che, I would recommend reading the Che Guevara Reader instead of this one. This is one of the very rare instances I would also recommend watching the movie rather than reading the book.

Interesting 'fact': The ever reliable Wikipedia states that Che never intended his diary to be published. 

Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Title: Love in the Time of Cholera
Author: Gabriel García Márquez, translated by Edith Grossman
Country: Colombia
Year: 1985
Rating: A-
Pages: 348

There are already some great reviews of this book out there: Eva at A Striped Armchair, Tanabata at In Spring it is the Dawn, Nymeth at Things Mean A Lot, and Chris at Book-A-Rama have all read Love in the Time of Cholera this year.

First sentence: It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

Challenge book? I read this for the Book Awards Challenge and 2nds Challenge. It was on my list for the Expanding Your Horizons Challenge, but that doesn't start until January so I'm not going to count it.

Short summary: How long would you wait for love? Florentino Ariza is preared to wait 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Love in the Time of Cholera is above all a love story set in the late 19th and early 20th century; a story about all the different ways that people can love each other.

What I thought: This novel is in a style completely different from One Hundred Years of Solitude (I would not classify it as a "magical realism" novel), but it retains the lyrical, passionate, and evocative prose that Marquez is so well known for. It is a love story, but it is not only a love story--more of an in-depth look at love and obsession, and how it can change and evolve over a lifetime.

I always love the imagery in many South American novels, and Marquez is one of the masters. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes magical realism, thoughtful prose, and strong character development. It is a book that demands your attention - if you don't have the time to immerse yourself, hold on to it for another day.

Interesting tidbit: In Spanish, el cólera means cholera, but la cólera means choler or anger. If you take this to the extreme, it can be used to describe warfare. In the novel, victims of the civil war are often mistaken for victims of cholera.

From the sky they could see, just as God saw them, the ruins of the very old and heroic city of Cartagene de Indias, the most beautiful in the world, abandoned by its inhabitants because of the cholera panic after three centuries of resistance to the sieges of the English and the atrocities of the buccaneers.

Someone said that cholera was ravaging the villages of the Great Swamp. Dr. Urbino, as he spoke, continued to look through the spyglass.
"Well, it must be a very special form of cholera," he said, "because every single corpse has received the coup de grace through the back of the neck."
-p.226