Thank you to the other one star raters for letting me retain a little faith in the human race. This was a horrible book. There is nothing about love in it. It could be called sex in the time of cholera - and sex in its lowest and most self serving forms.

For some reason this book tries very hard to get its audience to be sympathetic to a man who falls in love or so he thinks with a girl he doesn't know. Trying to be faithful to the "Love of his life" he sleeps with every one in his town from widows to 14 year old girls when he is past fifty. Not the type of person I am usually sympathetic for. The main character doesn't have any redeeming qualities except poetic writing but even that is over the top. How can you write thousands of pages of love to a girl you know nothing about except for her name? This book is so unrealistic, the characters are not interesting and the plot keeps getting sided track to events that have no real importance at all. The only likable character (and I say that lightly) dies from a pathetic tragedy that seems at first to be relevant to the plot even if it is unlikely but no that too was just more wasted words. If this is what I can expect from Oprah's list I will steer clear.

Thought this would be great, probably because of the hype and because I had heard that his other book was terrific. Coulnd't get past 7 pages of boredom. Passed the book on and was told the same thing by someone who also passed it on with the same result.