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Summary: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Review: Disturbing! This is the only single word that I can use to describe this book.Although definatley unique it the composition style, the book is dark and depressing. The theme of incest and child porn appeared to be the primary focus in the book instead of creationalism as eluded to in other reviews. It had an interesting ending but not worthy of the time spent leading up to it.
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Summary: Amazing and difficult
Review: What to make of this amazing, difficult and broken music that takes the form of literature? A challenge? Yes, certainly, but as with anything worthwhile, some effort must be put into it. I'm the first to admit that it doesn't fit in with Oprah's usual selections, but then why be in a rut? Overall, this is a stellar classic, much like Steinbeck's East of Eden or a handful of other great works. Also recommended: McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting
Review: An interesting book. Its a little confusing in its direction and scope though. Maybe not a must read, but pretty good overall. wwr@virginia.edu
Rating: 
Summary: Hmmm.....
Review: As I read the first third of the book, I kept having to go back to try and figure out which of the Jose's (there are MANY - half of the characters have the same name, it seems) was being discussed in each section. It was extremely frustrating - but I kept on going. In the middle of the book I stopped trying to pay any attention to who was who and just read each anecdote as if it stood on it's own - congratulating myself when I recognized the character from previous events. At the last - I finally started to know and care about the characters and really appreciate the beautiful images and the intense feelings and situations that make up "100 Years of Solitude". (By this time, I was also determined to finish it because my sister assured me that the ending was satisfying.) It was satisfying - to the point that the final chapters made me flip back to the beginning of the book and read parts over again. Still, I can't give this book the rave reviews that the critics and fans of Gabriel Garcia give it - there were just too many Jose's. I suppose that makes me a lazy reader, which is probably true. Still, the ending made me wistful that I had been half as involved with this long lived, passionate and magical family from the beginning.
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Summary: you don't JUST win a nobel prize of literature
Review: hello!!!!! the best book ever. this man is a genius, i don't care if he smoked something or not. it's a book you enjoy and enjoy, the way the characters seem to live all together, and bring each other from death. everything they go through, its VERY representative of latinamerican myths, and brings so much of real history into it, it's fascinating.......READ IT.
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Summary: Over a hundred pages of wonderful solitude
Review: I read this book in my freshman year of college. I loved it. It has many characters that flow together. The story has a magical realism to it. Characters die and come back to life, people live for years on end. It follows the lives of a family that deals with wars, tragic love, and mysterious dealings. I thorougly enjoyed reading this book and I recommend it to anyone who wants to enter a magical world filled with vibrant characters taking on all sorts of political and social issues to heart and then bending them as far as they can go. Think Dali.
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Summary: I can see its appeal to some, but I didn't like it....
Review: I picked up this book to read it because several of my friends were reading in from the Oprah book club. It is a complex novel with many characters and a very mystical feel to it. The writing has a stream-of-consciousness style to it which makes you feel like you are listening to someone tell you a story with lots of side remarks. My issue with this novel was not the mystical feel or the writing style, though they do take some getting used to. My problem was that the whole thing just seemed to be about war and sex, and although both things have their place in life and literature, they weren't things that I wanted to read an enormous novel about. Also, this book is really quite tragic and I just prefer to read things with a more positive spin. I can see how this novel would appeal to some people because it is so complex and meaty....there is a lot to the stories in this book! It just wasn't for me.
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Summary: Oprah does magic realism!
Review: Oprah always has her finger on the pulse of popular tastes in fiction, and with this novel her prose becomes more melifluous than ever, reflecting the somewhat exotic, unusual subject matter she has chosen. Although I prefer Oprah's previous book, East of Eden, this one is pretty good too, with a very interesting narrative structure upon which Oprah must have worked long and hard. Fictionally speaking, is there anything Oprah can't do?
Rating: 
Summary: The emperor has no clothes
Review: Boring, boring, boring. After 120 pages, I gave up. What is the point? I guess I don't get it. What was this guy smoking? How many characters need the same name? How many absurd tortures do we need to read about? The fantasy appears to be thrown in just for the sake of making incidences wild and imaginary and do not seem to be relative to the story or themes. Maybe something was lost in the translation, but if this is the next best thing to Genesis, we're all in trouble. Read The Red Tent --- it comes a lot closer to that billing.
Sorry, but I have other books to read, and many yawns before I sleep.
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Summary: Existence Is The Word
Review: By now, of course, the entire world is familiar with this stellar masterpiece that introduced Latin American literature to North American readers (last to join an already buzzing worldwide readership). The work has been translated even into languages like Quiché, Guaraní and Catalán. This unusual tale depicts the origins and ultimate demise of the mythical town of Macondo through the saga of the enigmatic Buendía family. In this richly symbolic and multilayered chronicle of life and death -- with repeating names, endless revolutions and deluvial rains, lust, incest, death, a search for truth and a plague of menacing red ants-- we are witness to the magical realism that essentially defines Latin America in every regard. To understand intimately Latin America is to understand the subtleties and wry humor of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE. This novel by Gabriel García Márquez, my absolute favorite author without exception, was first published in 1967 in Argentina under the title CIEN AÑOS DE SOLDEDAD, with the English translation appearing in 1970. It must have been about 1972-73 when I first read the original Spanish version and became enraptured immediately by the brilliance of this masterful piece of Latin American fiction, the most unusually crafted and the most widely discussed/debated literary creation in several decades across Latin America. Since its initial success worldwide, this rare gem has seen accompanying study guides, essays, dissertations, seminars, related university courses, entire books authored by noted contemporary literary figures devoted to the subject of interpreting this novel as well as to the author's entire body of literary production. I recall once viewing (1985) a personal interview filmed by the author, "García Márquez está cansado de las equivocaciones de la crítica" [GM is tired of the errors of the criticism]. The artist himself set the record straight regarding what he intended in this monumentally ambitious tale. Here in a nutshell for novice readers of Latin American literature translated into English are the preeminent themes running through this mystical novel: the interconnectedness of myth, reality, time and space; myth and history; the journey through the labyrinth of Latin American reality; the intertextuality of fiction and reality; a reality called "fiction"; the three levels of reality in one hundred years; violence and death as imaginary acts from a Latin perspective; man in search of himself in the surrealism of time and space; Macondo as a distinctive magical and Latin American domain; the fictionalization of history; the comic and carnivalesque; the subversion of time and space; geneological imperatives; the origins of Western civilization in Latin America; a portrait of Latin America: civilization vs barbarism; the Latin American novel as symbol of myth and archive; the tragic cylce and concept of collective identity and simultaneity; Latin American history as hieroglyphics; and perhaps finally ... the myth of apocalipse and human temporality. Gracias, Oprah, for bringing to the eager attention of your book club readers this serious literary work intended to provoke thought and a profoundly important classic from my part of the world. Next, please allow them to be equally seduced by the likes of Isabel Allende, Marise Condé, René Depestre, Luz Argentina Chiriboga or Earl Lovelace. Alan Cambeira
Author of AZUCAR! The Story of Sugar (a novel)
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