I read the book a couple of days ago and have "digested" it now.

It was interesting. I liked the style: it seems to be a Spanish-influenced style as the few Spanish books I have read (after translation!) read like this. I generally dislike books that start at the end and work back, but this was managable.

The characters were human, I'll give them that. In that just as you start to like them, they pee you off. Urbino I did like - then he had loads of women while he was training. Then he had an affair just as you start to like him again.

Fermia Daza didn't think things through and married Urbino for security. She wanted to be married before age 21. Mmmm. I liked her thought that your love for your children grows as they do, grows with the friendship you develop with them. Then at the end she cuts her daughter off from her life for not liking that prat of a man she took up with. I didn't like Florentino at all!

I did love the way FD just took one look at the chap she'd been writing to and thought "what the hell have I done?" - but didn't like her treatment of FA after that. FA was an idiot though, he went about everything the wrong way. His stalking of her (and the 600+ affairs) was creepy.

As like the rest of you, I didn't like the riverboat ending. I'd rather it ended with FD closing the door on FA after JU died. It wasn't a great love story and quite frankly, I dated a chap a bit like FA (mistake!) and if he was still waiting for me, waiting for DH to die... eugh. The thought turns my stomach. If someone turns you down THAT much - accept it and move on. Find love again. Don't stalk them and sleep with hundreds of people (telling each woman they were his first... who honestly wants to be a chap's first when he's old and bald?) telling yourself you're waiting for this woman. You're not. You're weird.