For Book Beginnings:
An ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Saturday in December, knocked down tables of fried food, overturned Indians' stalls and lottery kiosks, and bit four people who happened to cross its. path. Three of them were black slaves. The fourth, Sierva María de Todos Los Ángeles, the only child of the Marquis de Casalduero, had come there with a mulatta servant to buy a string of bells for the celebration of her twelfth birthday.
- p. 3
For Friday 56:
"It was an affront on our faith, Señor Marquis," said Delaura. "Hundred-year horses are not the work of God."
- p. 56About Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez: On her twelfth birthday, Sierva Maria, the only child of a decaying noble family in an eighteenth-century South American seaport, is bitten by a rabid dog. Believed to be possessed, she is brought to a convent for observation. And into her cell stumbles Father Cayetano Delaura, who has already dreamed about a girl with hair trailing after her like a bridal train. As he tends to her with holy water and sacramental oils, Delaura feels something shocking begin to occur. He has fallen in love, and it is not long until Sierva Maria joins him in his fevered misery.
Unsettling and indelible, Of Love and Other Demons is an evocative, majestic tale of the most universal experiences known to woman and man.
***
I first read this in 2004 and fell in love with it immediately, with Marquez's gorgeous language and love story steeped in the religion and superstition of 18th century Cartagena, Colombia. I'll be rereading this for the Read the Nobels 2016. I can't wait!
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