"In your fucking face Gabriel García Márquez, I finally finished Love in the Time of Cholera! Your long-winded, wistful ruminations on life, love and ageing over the course of four goddamn lifetimes are no match for my stubbornness and inability to know when to quit!"

Whilst this statement makes me feel like a massive heathen for not fully appreciating one of the great works of literature, it's exactly how I felt when I finished it. His writing style is absolutely beautiful, but I struggled to keep focus on almost every page and I didn't care for any of the characters, so to endure their company for an actual lifetime was a real challenge. The only part that really moved me was seeing how the world changed around them, and the riverboat captain talking towards the end about the devastation of the river was particularly powerful. I think it may be one of those novels you appreciate more as you get older, but it's hard to tell. At this stage I never want to pick it up again. It feels like such an achievement to have finished it though and that, combined with his obvious writing prowess, are why this ended up at 3 stars. I won't be recommending anyone reads it though that's for sure.