Of love and other demons by Marquez took me into familiar territory; the territory in my cerebral space which is especially reserved for the fictionary tales of Marquez. This space gets activated as the indicators that receive signals begin to infuse my creative imagination, for reading a manuscript from Marquez is like awakening my dormant or dwindling creative imagination. He makes me see everything differently, the wounds on a leper’s body, the rows of books in the city central library, the flowers on a corpse, the flailing and the travails of an intoxicated addict and so on. Ultimately of what love can do to you, for it is the biggest demon of all, exercising its satanic power in this world and beyond. The novel is about the forbidden love between a devout, fervent bishop and a forlorn beautiful girl who is supposedly possessed of a devilish spirit.
By the authority of the archbishop, this flawless and incorruptible bishop is sent to study the case and exorcise the ghost. Love has never rended him. Love has never visited him. But now, as he administers his sacred rituals and tries to reason with the child, she spits green venom at him uttering expletives in mysterious African tongues, she has learnt from the slaves: the specter of love hanging on his funereal shroud pierces its deepest arrow in his heart.
It is fated to end in death. Of love and other demons is a Caribbean novel. One can learn more about the Caribbean psyche, way of life from this novel than from history books.The novel's portentous vision works to sieve together all that is life and as a result the fantastic and the mundane co-exist and the exact point that branches out into this tale,is when the corpse of a young girl is discovered from the burial crypts of a catholic convent of Santa Clara more than 100 years afterwards. But the wondrous thing is that SIERVA MARIA spread out on the floor, had her hair on, in the color of intense copper, which measured 22 mts and 11 cms.
At another level, the novel is a treatise on sanity. “It is not that this girl is unfit for everything. It is that she is not of this world.” The Bishop, Delaura is on the verge of committing heresy, co-habiting and consorting with the devil. This diabolical dilemma in a cocktail of religion, superstition, custom, heresy, love and innocence, penned splendidly by Marquez takes the reader by storm, shocking and astonishing at the same time. But true to his philosophy, Marquez sticks to his tenets, “Love is devoid of sanity. Real love is nearly insanity and the sane world is a small place to comprehend this miraculous feeling.”