In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again. With humorous sagacity and consummate craft, García Márquez traces an exceptional half-century story of unrequited love. Though it seems never to be conveniently contained, love flows through the novel in many wonderful guises--joyful, melancholy, enriching, ever surprising. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

In this chronicle of a unique love triangle, the Nobel laureate's trademark ``ironic vision and luminous evocation of South America'' persist. ``It is a fully mature novel in scope and perspective, flawlessly translated, as rich in ideas as in humanity,'' praised PW . 250,000 first printing. (Apr.) From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

While delivering a message to her father, Florentino Ariza spots the barely pubescent Fermina Daza and immediately falls in love. What follows is the story of a passion that extends over 50 years, as Fermina is courted solely by letter, decisively rejects her suitor when he first speaks, and then joins the urbane Dr. Juvenal Urbino, much above her station, in a marriage initially loveless but ultimately remarkable in its strength. Florentino remains faithful in his fashion; paralleling the tale of the marriage is that of his numerous liaisons, all ultimately without the depth of love he again declares at Urbino's death. In substance and style not as fantastical, as mythologizing, as the previous works, this is a compelling exploration of the myths we make of love. Highly recommended. Barbara Hoffert, ``Library Journal'' From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Stylistically halfway between the realism of No One Writes to the Colonel (CH, Apr '69) and the fantastic exuberance of One Hundred Years of Solitude (CH, Sep '70), this novel is a parody of popular romantic fiction with all its cliches and expectations. Its origin can be traced to a character's remark in Solitude, explaining her rejection of a suitor: "He says he is dying because of me, as if I were a bad case of colic." Now Garcia Marquez equates love to cholera, and characters wonder whether their physical symptoms are caused by their infatuation or by the disease. This wry humor permeates the novel, set against the cultural and sociopolitical background of a dying Caribbean city, between the late 1870s and early 1930s. The heroine, Fermina Daza, after a brief youthful epistolary romance with Florentino Ariza, marries the patrician Dr. Juvenal Urbino, pressured by her socially ambitious father. Florentino decides to wait for her--engaging in Rabelaisian sex during the interlude--and 50 years later makes her his mistress after Urbino's death. The implausible plot underlines a machista approach: Fermina is manipulated by her father, her wealthy suitor, and at the end by her lover. Although it has neither the richness and complexity of One Hundred Years of Solitude nor its larger-than-life and consistent characters, this is a tender novel about old age and hope, assertive in proposing the triumph of instinct against reason. Grossman's translation captures the rhythm and beauty of the author's prose very commendably. For university and public libraries. -J. A. Hernandez, Hood College From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.