Rating: 
Summary: A brilliant creation
Review: This is not a simple flowing novel, eventhough it at times appears as such. it is also not a difficult book to read like other nobel price winning novels. Marquez' novel is read by everyone from different social classes and different ages and genders. It has acquired a respectable position among the most popular novels in postmodern history, and Marquez' popularity has elevated accordingly. It has been read by most as popular fiction, but it has also become a dream novel for academics and literary critics. this work contains so much from various fields that it is impossible to grasp all the content in one review.
let us begin from the end. in the final pages of the novel we discover that we have been deciphering and reading the secret texts of Melquiades along with a sixth generation Buendia. As we (Buendia and us) reach the final pages, the town of Macondo and its history, its characters and the walls of the room that preserved the solitude of Aureliano Buendia as he lead us through a hundred years of Macondo's history, begins to dissappear into thin air. only in the last phase of the novel do we understand that we have been reading a personal and subjective account of Macondo's history, unlike how the text first presents itself in the beginning of the novel as an authoritive objective piece of fiction.
The foundation of Macondo, its evolution from a marginal unknown village into a metropolitan economic center, and then its annihilation saturates the imagination of the most novel readers of fiction. The characters, such as Jose Arcadio Buendia and his family, that carry Macondo into the stages of progress and then into its era of decadence, are colorful creations of brilliant mind. Marquez parodies Latin America's colorful history and characters. He draws on the rich Latin imagination and narrates the novel in a ingenious casual voice, as if the fantastic events of Macondo (flying carpets, decade-long rainfalls, mute beautiful virgins and etc) are the most natural things on earth. Marquez himself claims that he inherited this tone from his grandmother, who would tell him the most fantastic things with the most natural casual tone.
Biblical annotations are easily found in the text, particularly if look into the origins of Macondo, and the incestuous marriages between the members of the Buendia family. There is also a long line of philosophical evolution throughout the text, from Platonic, Aristotelian dynamics to Hegelian monism up until Nietzschean and Derridian deconstruction. The Universe of Macondo changes constantly until the end.
This is one of the most impressive literary creations in history. It should be read at least once during a lifetime, in order to have witnessed true human ingenuity.
Rating:
Summary: 1,000 words aren't enough to review this book...
Review: When you finish this book, you will have a feeling that you have just read something very important, a "great novel", but you will be at a loss to recall what was so meaningful about the book. This is the curious effect of Garcia Marquez' writing style. Garcia Marquez learned to write by imitating many of Western culture's "key" texts (the Bible, Rabelais, Faulkner, the 18th century English novelists, etc), and the influence of these texts shows very strongly. From the Bible and from Rabelais (and presumably from his grandmother and other small town story tellers he listened to as a child) Garcia learned how to narrate through lists and how to use hyperbole to unsettle the reader. The results are humorous, and as we read Garcia, texts like the Bible echo and resonate in the back of our minds, without being identified consciously. Because of this stylistic quality, the words "biblical" and "rabelaisian" have been used many times to describe this book. Another fascinating aspect of Garcia's style is the ruptures between the time of events narrated and the time of narrative. Someone well-versed in Gerard Genette's "Narrative Discourse" could have a field-day picking apart all of the ways in which Garcia uses normal narrative to create multiple threads of story which wont get resolved for many pages. There is very little dialogue in this novel, because there is a compactness of time which is necessary to cover so many years and so many generations of narrative succintly. Because of the games played with narrative time, this book has been called "post-modern." But the most talked about stylistic feature of the book is Garcia's "magic realism", a term invented by readers who couldn't quite identify explicitly what it was about the novel that made it seem so curiously exagerated yet realistic at the same time. A careful reading, and you will discover that there is nothing "realist" in the 19th century sense of the word about this narrative. Without dialogue, our entire notion of the story is colored by the narrator and what the narrator shares with us. This is an anti-Hemingway "all-telling, no showing" narrative with a curious result. Time and again our emotional reactions to the events are dictated by the third person narrator's suspiciously subjective adjectives and omniscience into the minds of characters. We are told that so-&-so was astonished upon seeing X or that the inventions brought by the gypsies were amazing. The world described in this book is heavy with words like "incredible", "amazing", "inexpicable", "astonishing"... you get the idea. Eventually you are lulled into letting the narrator dictate your emotional responses to the events described, rather than formulating your own response to such events. The narrator tells you someone thought something was marvilous, and it seems so to you, the reader. Pehaps this is always the case with reading. In this case it is more pronounced than normal since the narrator's vision is marked by naivete, superstition, and a child-like pre-rational amazement with all things possible and impossible in this world. Such innocence is infectious. The result, you too will feel something strangely magical about the seemingly matter-of-fact world the narrator describes. But beyond the top-quality narrative brilliance of this novel, thanks to Faulkner Garcia has created a mythical Latin American "everyplace" located in no easily identifiable country. Although Garcia doesn't set the story in any real setting, the local-color element of this story is impressive. Because Macondo, the setting of the story, is nowhere in Latin America, Macondo is, in a sense, everywhere in Latin America. That, perhaps, more than Garcia's delightful "magic realist" narrative playfulness, is what makes this novel truly the quintesential Latin American narrative of the 20the century.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe not his best work but...
Review: ...the bar is pretty high, in fact it is soaring in the Andes. The Maestro Garcia Marquez crafts a story that does not begin as fast as we are normally accustomed. For some readers that can be a turn off. I've talked to many readers who never gave this book a chance because of this. That's a pity because it is an intense love story. Passionate and full of life, like Columbia and South America. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has a way of pulling you in and enveloping you, like the humidity of his native continent, and you can't shake it. So stick with it and he'll reward you for your work. After all he is the Maestro!
Rating:
Summary: A true classic!
Review: "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpiece, the one novel he was born to write. Having said that, don't fool yourself by thinking that "One hundred Years of Solitude" is an easy read, because it is not! At least it is not an easy read to begin with, but hang in there - it is evidently worth the struggle! Make sure that you get an edition that has a family tree of the Buendía family in front of the book. Ear-dog that page, as you will use it repeatedly while working your way through this book. I mean, how many Josés, Aurelianos, or Remedios can you possibly remember and/or distinguish between? "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is the story of the small village 'Macondo' hidden the jungle of Colombia. José Arcadio Buendía was the founder of this village, and it is the story of him and his family that keeps you spellbound through the 400+ pages. After finishing this book you will understand why Garcia Marques won the Nobel Prize. This is one of my all time favorite books. I only wish I read Spanish so well that I could read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in its original language. I couldn't recommend it more highly. A great read!
Rating:
Summary: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Review: An amazingly beautiful lyrical book which carefully weaves magicical realism into the intricate account of 100 years of a family, each character unique, complex and endearing. Every sentence reads like poetry and soon you are entranced, finding yourself drifting dazily into the town of Macondo, and imagining hanging your cot with the rest of the Buendia family. I have read this book three times, and notice new glimpses of Marquez's genius each time. And if the lyrical passages and poetic descriptions aren't enough, there is lots of sex, war, jealousy, violence, passion and love. Only the brilliance of Marquez could combine all of this into one book. And most delightful of all, the images linger long after the last page has been read.
Rating: 
Summary: Can I give it -9999 Stars instead?
Review: Yawn. 400 some pages of nothing but incest and death. Characters with the same name throughout the book. Non-linear time, too, it's very hard to follow. How could this "book" change your life? I have come to fear love, it's like your emotions are being dragged through the mud and everything you hold dear and ethical are just pushed away like its nothing. It was about incest, personally, maybe something was lost in the translation. It was so depressing and disturbing. I could not sleep without lights on after I finished reading it. I would never suggest this book to anybody who has a weak constitution or is easily emotionally disturbed. NOT good reading for a highschool student. Even Faulkner's The Bear was not about incest (it was bad too).
Rating:
Summary: The best way to experience latin american fantastic realism
Review: If you are starting to read latin american, fantastic realism or both, you should start with this book. Since half the characters have the same name (actually, there are two names that repeat through the book), I would suggest to read it all in one or two weeks...it's easier to remember the names and small details - which are plenty, by the way. Its characters are well depicted, and show the difference between anglo-saxon and latin characters. Also, the sensuality of the latin novel is quite well represented in this book, though it main focus is far more broad than sensuality. Comparing the sensual passages with - say - those from Henry Miller, is quite enlightening...While the second is objective and raw, the former brings the reader a richer experience.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece for our time.
Review: There has been so much written about this book. I've read it twice and it amazed me the second time more than the first. It is magical and marvelous, you won't believe what you are reading so you must go with the flow or the oncoming rain in this case. Sometimes it's best to suspend one's disbelief and skepticism and move where the maestro (Garcia-Marquez) takes you. To say anything more is pointless. Please stop staring at the computer and order this book! And enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Relentless fascination.
Review: Reading this book, though in my native language (Hebrew) and from pages crumblingly old, was an extraordinary experience. The beautifully long and epic story that spans a lifetime, the omnipresent surreal magic that seems to be taken for granted by all the characters, the painful examples of how tragic Time indeed is, all combine to weave an incredible, long-lasting impression. This is one of those books that I can safely say have changed something in me. Read it.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read for all Spanish-speaking people
Review: I have just put down "One Hundred Years of Solitude" with pride and shame. Pride because this novel is a jewel in Spanish literature and shame because it took me 34 years of my life to finally command myself to enjoying García Márquez's masterpiece. The author's ability to build characters is amazing, his prose is elegant and his descriptive technique knows no match. The plot is fascinating, although the abundance of Aureliano Buendía characters triggers a great deal of confusion. The storyline follows a conspicuous Spanish American tradition of semi-surrealistic themes mixing realism and symbolism in order to neutralize simplicity.
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