When one reads a classic there are a million extra ways to be surprised, because for so long preconceived notions have been quietly stewing in our minds about what sort of story the book is going to tell. Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera is just such a classic, first published in English in 1988 and an irrevocably iconic work ever since, second only to his Nobel Prize-winning 100 Years of Solitude. Yet in twenty-six years its story – the tale of Florentino Ariza’s devastating love and half-century of waiting for the beautiful Fermina Daza – will not be as instantly recognizable to readers, or as culturally ingrained, as the love stories between Rhett and Scarlett or Cathy and Heathcliff, for example. It’s a young novel yet, but there seems to be an enduring singularity to it that will allow it to slip through the grasp of convention for a long time; and it’s also an impressively subjective novel, with every page giving rise to new reactions in its reader, opening the door for uncountable opinions. These two factors alone make the prospect of writing about it rather staggering, to say the least, but it’s a novel that surely evokes a prolonged, unshakable reaction.