Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
My rating: ★★☆☆☆
I was so excited to read this and so disappointed by it… One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my all-time favorite books, and I assumed I would love all of Márquez’s work. But this book had a lot of casual racism, and the ‘love’ between Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza was disturbing. At first it was very sweet, but then she clearly has a change of heart. She fell out of love with him and was devoted to her husband entirely. But Florentino had this 'just need to convince her that she loves me’ attitude that is really creepy. He literally waits until her husband dies to come and claim her, because he's so certain that she'll end up loving him. This kind of character is described on TVTropes.com as the 'Dogged Nice Guy' or 'Stalker With a Crush'. Romances like this gross me out, and I don't understand how anyone could feel that Florentino was in any way romantic or endearing. Poor Fermina.
My rating: ★★☆☆☆
I was so excited to read this and so disappointed by it… One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my all-time favorite books, and I assumed I would love all of Márquez’s work. But this book had a lot of casual racism, and the ‘love’ between Fermina Daza and Florentino Ariza was disturbing. At first it was very sweet, but then she clearly has a change of heart. She fell out of love with him and was devoted to her husband entirely. But Florentino had this 'just need to convince her that she loves me’ attitude that is really creepy. He literally waits until her husband dies to come and claim her, because he's so certain that she'll end up loving him. This kind of character is described on TVTropes.com as the 'Dogged Nice Guy' or 'Stalker With a Crush'. Romances like this gross me out, and I don't understand how anyone could feel that Florentino was in any way romantic or endearing. Poor Fermina.
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
My rating: ★★★★☆ This book is basically Old Yeller, but with an adorable baby deer instead of a dog. The descriptions of the forest and Jody's romping were so charming. Rawlings has a talent for creating vivid images of nature in the reader's mind. I also found Jody's awe and love of his father very sweet, this book could be a good Father's Day gift! I wanted to give this book 5 stars, but the misogyny that is so casually a part of this twelve year old’s point of view took so much away from the story. I know, it’s a product of its time, but it really took away from my enjoyment.
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Gross, gross, GROSS. With the premise and the hype, I thought I’d love this series. But I couldn't even finish it because of the rampant sexism and misogyny and sexual assault. At first I was like, this is kind of boring, but not terrible. Then, when Claire goes back in time, literally all of the characters she gives a shit about are men, and she disregards all of the women she meets as sad and boring. Her inner monologue is essentially ‘Oh and I made friends with some of the castle workmaids, I think that one might be named Catherine’. That pissed me off. Then one of the men sexually assaults her in the hallway as ‘payment’ for having saved her from ‘even worse’ on a banquet night. And she doesn't even seem to mind, she doesn't give it a thought. Not only that, after he assaults her, he suddenly becomes a father figure to her and her new husband. This is so disturbing I don't even know how to criticize it. By the time her husband spanks her for disobeying him, in a scene that I doubt anyone could read as cute or sexy, I was disgusted. It is absolutely ridiculous for women to romanticize the past, when they had virtually no rights and were the equivalent of property. And the argument that Diana Gabaldon is simply writing all of this to be historically accurate is a bullshit excuse.
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