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It was inevitable; the smell of horse manure and jasmine always reminded her of hot summer nights outside the palace walls of Seville. Twenty-something years ago, I had the incredible luck to win a grant that paid for my airfare to Spain, where I spent two weeks learning the language. At the time, I was doing my PhD at UCLA, and a summer vacation in Madrid the year before had sparked a love affair with everything Spanish that has only grown more intense over the years.

Devouring book after book is no longer serving my intellectual needs. This time I picked ONE. Just one. And I’ll take my sweet time with it. I’ll savour the language, I’ll analyze the ideas, I’ll find the conflicts and the patterns that make up its identity. I’ll treat is a new friend that I’ll get to know in depth. So, when I finish this book, I’ll remember it forever.

What happens when you slow down and read critically, but at your own pace? Follow my close reading of Love in the Time of Cholera, where I explore its themes, patterns, assumptions and contradictions.

Anyone familiar with the everyday trivialities and quiet resentments of married life will smile in recognition at the soap incident in Love in the Time of Cholera. The incident itself seems trivial. It is night-time, and Dr Urbino emerges from the bathroom, dressing in the dark. Aware that his wife is not yet asleep, despite her closed eyes and habitual sleeping posture, he makes a deliberate show of rustling the starched sheets before muttering, more to be overheard than to

Whenever I start a new book, my first order of business is figuring out what’s happening: When and where do the events take place? Who are the main characters? And, most importantly, what exactly is going on?