Julia_98 reviewed Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez
When Innocence and Obsession Learned Each Other’s Names
4 stars
It began for me not with romance, but with unease. Opening Of Love and Other Demons, I sensed immediately that this was a story where tenderness and cruelty would exist uncomfortably close. Gabriel García Márquez sets the novel in a colonial world governed by superstition, religion, and fear, and I felt those forces press in from the first pages. The discovery of Sierva María’s grave frames the narrative like a warning rather than an invitation.
The story follows Sierva María, a young girl bitten by a dog and subsequently condemned by society as possibly possessed. As I read, I felt growing anger at how quickly ignorance becomes authority. Her upbringing among enslaved Africans gives her a richness of language and spirit that the ruling class cannot interpret. Instead of curiosity, they respond with control. Watching this unfold left me unsettled. The danger she faces does not come from …
It began for me not with romance, but with unease. Opening Of Love and Other Demons, I sensed immediately that this was a story where tenderness and cruelty would exist uncomfortably close. Gabriel García Márquez sets the novel in a colonial world governed by superstition, religion, and fear, and I felt those forces press in from the first pages. The discovery of Sierva María’s grave frames the narrative like a warning rather than an invitation.
The story follows Sierva María, a young girl bitten by a dog and subsequently condemned by society as possibly possessed. As I read, I felt growing anger at how quickly ignorance becomes authority. Her upbringing among enslaved Africans gives her a richness of language and spirit that the ruling class cannot interpret. Instead of curiosity, they respond with control. Watching this unfold left me unsettled. The danger she faces does not come from demons, but from certainty.
Father Cayetano Delaura’s involvement shifted the novel’s emotional weight. His initial duty gradually dissolves into forbidden love, and I felt torn while reading these passages. Their bond is portrayed with delicacy, yet it exists within a system that makes it impossible. I did not feel invited to celebrate their love. I felt invited to witness its fragility. Márquez does not romanticize innocence. He shows how desire, even when sincere, can become destructive when shaped by repression.
What stayed with me most was the atmosphere. The convent, the heat, the rituals, and the quiet cruelty of faith without compassion created a sense of slow suffocation. I felt how isolation can masquerade as salvation. Sierva María’s suffering is not loud. It is procedural. That made it harder to bear.
By the final pages, I felt a deep sadness rather than shock. The tragedy felt inevitable, not because of fate, but because no one in power was willing to question themselves. Closing the book, I sat quietly for a moment. Of Love and Other Demons reminded me that the most dangerous forces are often those that believe they are righteous. It left me with grief, but also clarity about how love, when denied air, can become another form of punishment.