Rating: 
Summary: Mixed bag
Review: An iconic text in the 1960s, following 100 years in the fortunes of the Buendia family in the town they found, Macondo. Full of mystery, magic, superstition, pain (physical and emotional), and violence. Although the end part of the novel falls short of the very high standards of the beginning and middle, it remains an epic work. As well as charting the personal vicissitudes of the family, it deals with war, politics, and the growth/decline of industrialism, with its accompanying corruption. Marquez's gorgeous prose with its fantasies and extreme - sometimes murderous - passions, is superbly translated by Gregory Rabassa. The episode describing the family sitting for daguerrotypes, with its pathos and dignity, is one of the most beautiful I've ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: The most painful reading and I did finish it.
Review: My wife loved this book. I belong to a book club at work and they chose this book. I finished it. It was painful. Other members in the club also agreed -- It was extremely tedious, repetitiously annoying and not funny.
Rating: 
Summary: Could not put it down
Review: I am a reader of Non -Fiction, especially anything related to courageous real life stories and this book, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE fits the bill. It is honest,at times captivating and very difficult to put down until you have finished reading it. I can understand why this was an Oprah pick as it is so poignant in detail. (...)All amazing and well written memoirs in thier own rights.
Rating:
Summary: There are better choices
Review: I don't understand all the hype with this book. I bought the book and the companion spark notes prepared to read one of the world's greatest books. What a grind! Repetion and silly literary tricks. You'd do better to find another "classic" like Moby Dick, Don Quiote, some Faulkner, some Hemingway, Stegner, Steinbeck, etc. At least now I can brag that I read it. Unfortunatley I could have spent the time reading something more rewarding. If you want Spanish authors, try Jorge Borges. Now there's a great writer! Deep though. Be prpared to ponder the symbolism....but it's different than pondering Marquez' symbolism. Marquez has a style where things don't necessarily make sense so you think "he's a great writer so it must be symbolic -- otherwise he wouldn't have lead me down this path". Borges, on the other hand make the story interesting AND DEEP.
Rating:
Summary: Snooze fest
Review: Better than Ambien. Faster than Nembutal.
Rating:
Summary: Intermittent magic, but mainly real
Review: If magic realism means magic in parts and mundanely real in other parts, then the book was faithful to that style. I must admit feeling cheated at the end to discover that what we had journeyed through was just Melquiade's script. On the whole, it was pretty laborious reading - even for a rapacious reader like me. The book is mainly a linear narrative punctuated only scantily by actual dialogue. This makes it rather tedious as you have to trudge through a lot of narration before you arrive at actual dialogue, something that deprives a lot of the characters of color. I think there is an optimum ratio of dialogue to narration that they preach in writing schools, but clearly Marquez is above those. Redundancy in the names of the characters greatly bottlenecks the fluidity of the texts. I kept wishing that he had named the characters uniquely because this style is not at all reader-friendly - and I don't care how illustrious and felicitated a writer you are supposed to be, it is just plain sadistic to foist that on unsuspecting readers. I guess I am not the first one to say that I had to keep reverting to the family tree to re-orient myself with the characters. It seems to be a signature of Marquez that his characters sexualities blossom pretty early. I read Love in the Time of Cholera some while back and this was the most disturbing of that book (okay aside from a senescent man's capering with a pre-pubescent child), until I realised it was a recurring feature in One Hundred Years too. I am still unsure if that's the magic or realism kicked in, or if I am just in a cultural warp. All that said, the reason I can't entirely trash the book is that Marquez's expressions and felicity with words in parts is exquisite. I am a sucker for masterstroke opening lines, and this book's opener will remain in my memory long after that of the characters has dissolved. So I do appreciate those vignettes of genius that emerge from what is otherwise an ordinary work that doesn't merit the rapture surrounding it.
Rating: 
Summary: For god¿s sake Melquiades just tell them and spare us...
Review: I picked up this book to busy myself while waiting for my friend to get her hair done. I wish I didn't, this book was a TORTURE. After the first few pages I was complaining that I wasn't getting into it. Since I can't start reading a book and leave it un-finished, I pressed on and got to the 100th page or so, errr, I still wasn't getting into it. Figuring out a way to remember who is who, was my first accomplishment, figuring out how old people were wasn't as successful. I thought this was important because trying to understand the feelings behind the crush of a 13 year old is different than that of a 16 year old. Was Remedios 9, 12 or 13 when she got married? This by itself should've been a big hint for me that I wasn't relating to the culture of the author. I imagine the emotional/sexual relationships between the different members of the family was meant to represent something in the way it occurred, evolved and eventually produced the final results, but it is unclear what. No, I didn't think it was offensive or immoral, I simply didn't know what to think of it. Maybe this was the problem. Finishing the rest of the book took more energy than I care to put into reading anything non scientific. The general idea was pretty obvious. The specifics were hard to grasp or relate to. Like other readers suggested, the characters are one dimensional and it was hard to care or like any of them. I kept on anticipating that Colonel Aureliano or Ursula will carry the book to the end. I was convinced of it when it dawned on Ursula that Rebecca was more of a Buendia than Amaranta, and the reason Amaranta behaved the way she did... that we were going somewhere, but... the "whole page" Marquez dedicated to this moment of "explosive" enlightenment reduced the quality of the piece even further and we went right back to more boring events and more Aurelianos and Jose's being born. Then, I hoped that the Colonel in his old age, when he realizes the reality of his 32 wars, will enlighten us with his "wisdom" (I am still convinced that the Colonel was supposed to represent a more complex object). It didn't happen either... By the time of the town massacre I have lost all hopes of getting getting anything out of the book. Even though I can sense the signals lurking there, they remained ambiguous at best... The only contentment I had while reading this book was when I found I only have 18 pages to go... Maybe this book was more interesting in the period it was released before a hundred other books were produced about the same subject.
Rating:
Summary: Difficult to grasp excessive magic realism..
Review: As mentioned in the prologue, Gabriel Garcia Marquez makes an attempt to grasp the storytelling voice of his grandmother throughout the novel. He also tries to capture the surrealistic elements of these stories as they presented themselves to him when he was a child. Thus we have that familiar element of a tragic fairytale being told, which makes the story convuluted and difficult to read. Perhaps something got lost in translation. Perhaps I'm just an idiot. But my second attempt at mastering the novel, spurned on by Oprah's literate voice, failed at about 300 pages in (it's a little over 450 pages). I was frustarted with the continuing use of the Jose Buendia name and the fact that I had to keep flipping back to the family chart at the beginning to remember who people were. Again, maybe I'm just an idiot who happens to hold an English degree, but my continuous feeling that this book was more work than pleasure pesisted and I kept asking myself how could people possibly consider this to be his best work. It's not. I reserve that role for Love In The Time Of Cholera and Chronicles Of A Death Foretold. Both are profound page turners that makes one contemplate, well, everything because he seems to say everything that needs to said in those two novels. However, One Hundred Years of Solitude is just Garbriel Garcia Marquez talking trash.
Rating:
Summary: Reading For The Joy of Reading
Review: I began this book before I heard that it was to be on Oprah's Book Club. I have to say that I am very delighted that it is on her list. I can understand the general population not getting into this book. It is strange, but within that lies the essence of the story. It has no purpose, no meaning, no lesson. It is just meant to be read and enjoyed. His "magical realism" is that of telling absolutely absurd events in the most practical of ways. And it adds such passion and heart and childlike sympathy that there was nothing else I could do but love it. Give this book a chance. All it needs from you is an open heart and mind. Expect to be taken on a journey deep into the mystical heart of Macondo and the solitary heart of the Buendias.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite book
Review: For all the people that rated this book les than 4 stars: is just that they didn't know how to appreciate true rotten art. This book is a creativity explosion. Open your mind, get relax and prepare yourself to enjoy the story of a family leaving in a place called Macondo, a place where everything can be possible. Love, madness, magic, wonder, death, everything in only one book. Rotten in a way that defies imagination.
|
