I don't know if the book carried a bit long towards an inevitable conclusion, but I enjoyed it nonetheless and found the ending satisfying. He has the uncanny ability to introduce and have you fully understand his characters within a page or two and the way he wove the women in and out of Florentino's life was beautiful. I'm glad to be through the book though; it wasn't a particularly easy one to read casually.
He said that people who loved (animals) to excess were capable of the worst cruelties toward human beings. He said that dogs were not loyal but servile, that cats were opportunists and traitors, that peacocks were heralds of death, that macaws were simply decorative annoyances, that rabbits fomented greed, that monkeys carried the fever of lust, and that roosters were damned because they had been complicit in the three denials of Christ.(p.21)
Her grief exploded into a blind range against the world, even against herself, and that is what filled her with the control and the courage to face her solitude alone. From that time on she had no peace, but she was careful about any gesture that might seem to betray her grief. (p.47)
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