Sadly I must admit that as the story went on I found the characters to become duller. Part of it I feel is that I became bored with them. Florentino continued to be pitiful, Fermina continued to be strong willed, and Urbino continued to be awesome. Interesting for the first 200 pages I just found these aspects of the primary characters to be expressed in far too many ways quite unnecessarily. Maybe this was meant to stress how much time was passing, but it just didn’t work for me. I became more interested in the secondary characters, mainly Florentino’s various women folk, as they are each incredibly different and reflect a different perspective of female life in such an interesting time and place.

Of the women Florentino encounters some are as weak minded as him and end up blending into the background as just one of the hundreds of affairs his life is made up of. There are two women specifically that stood out to me as more interesting and even slightly more realistic than Florentino’s average fling.

First, the only woman with enough respect for herself to not ever give into the sexual attraction of Florentino and in turn one of the only to have a positive affect on him, Leona Cassiani. Mistaken at first, we along with Florentino believe her to be a lady of the night, when actuality she is about as far from one as you can get. Instead she is at heart a businesswoman and ends up being a very good one at that. Because of this skill set her relationship with Florentino is formed on the basis of being associates rather than lovers and becomes much closer because of this. Leona is superior to Florentino in business in every way, but due to her love for him she helps him along so that he is able to rise in a world that he is definitely not meant for. What Florentino missed in a father I feel that Leona was able to make up for as she gave him the support structure he had never had along with being a lifelong friend.

The other woman who I find to be particularly interesting, or in her case exciting, is Olimpia Zuleta. Pigeon woman, wife, and eventually dead. Dead not because of her pigeons, what could have been a pretty awesome twist, but because of body paint, along with the whole being married thing. She was naive in a way none of Florentino’s other broads had been and she had a husband. This wouldn’t have been very exciting except for the fact that Florentino left a trace of his loving for the first time since Fermina. Expressing his love through the written word and once again being tempted by a forbidden fruit Florentino feels what he thinks is love again, but then its over. She is dead and rather than being sad he is afraid. Afraid that out of this ordeal Fermina will find out of about his life under the sheets. Another reason I don’t like the guy and a reason why I was able to enjoy this love and death affair.