Funny to watch Garcia Marquez struggle with material that bores him and turn to what he wants to write about: sex

In Gracia Marquez fashion, the focus of "The General in His Labyrinth" moves away from the political intrigue and the many wars for independence in Latin America and more toward sexual conquest. He has totally made Simon Bolivar into a Garcia Marquez character, as he should. And it's almost comical to watch Garcia Marquez struggle with the material that obviously bores him, the political intrigue, the backstabbing, the revolutions and counterrevolutions, and move on to what interests him - the romantic, sexual, nostalgic. Bolivar is "old" (46?) and dying, and of course he remembers the many loves of his life, some lasting many years, some one night only, all of them entwined and intersecting and overlapping, as he never could or would commit to one woman. It's an eternal Garcia Marquez theme, the love that has the power to shape a whole life, even if the lovers are separated by miles and by years - Bolivar for that matter may just as well have been one of the provincial "Dons" who inhabit most of Garcia Marquez's other novels. You don't want to read this book as a testament of historic fact, though it may be quite accurate and based on sources, who knows?, but you read it as Garcia Marquez on a grand scale, painting with his distinct style on a historical canvas. It adds something, I guess, that Simon Bolivar is a real and famous historic figure, but the novel would (at least for a N.American reader) read just as powerfully and effectively if the character were entirely fictive.