Rating: 
Summary: A timeless classic
Review: The One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most interesting novel I have ever read. First it starts with a married couple who are counsins, afraid that they will have a child with a pig tail, a myth about what happens when you marry close relations. This novel has the most confusing set of characters with the same name carried on from generation to generation. And this novel has some of the most interesting events that you will ever read. As you read this novel, you can actually see each charactrer falling into their life of solitude, one by one.This novel is very good, and I highly recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: a magical book
Review: I read this book once nearly 30 years ago and yet many of the images from it remain vibrant for me. I remember picking up the book in the dorm room of a friend and laughing at the cover blurb: "You emerge from this book as if from a dream, the mind on fire." And my friend said, "You know, the strange thing is that this is a pretty good description." And he and the reviewer were right.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Book Ever!
Review: 100 Years of Solitude is the BEST book I've EVER read. But it's not for everyone: you either love it, can't put it down and can't wait to read it AGAIN, or you can't go beyond the first 10 pages. Another reviewer said the book is not easy, I have to disagree: it's pure magic and a pleasure. I guess it doesn't work for those who are too rational, it's not a book to be read but that reads to you. One way or the other, a little advice: don't try to memorize names or understand the family tree. It's NOT important. It will flow and make sense, beautifully, I promise!
Rating:
Summary: One of the great books of the 20th century
Review: This monumental novel is the originator of "magic realism," a style that has since been used so often by lesser writers as to give the genre a bad name. However, Garcia Marquez's work is the true original, disclosing to the reader a world in which the ordinary and the mystical live side by side, a state of existence viewed as unremarkable by the characters, and eventually by the reader as well. The characters are sharply drawn, masterful combinations of the down-to-earth and the eccentric. These succeeding generations of the Buendia family often have the same names as their ancestors, and while this can become confusing, the people themselves are such individuals, each of their lives bearing their own distinctive stamp, that at times we see them as clearly as if they were before us. The style is wholly original, a sonorous parlance that rolls along like the river described in the opening passages, in which the water has polished the stones to the smoothness of "prehistoric eggs." The language catches this sense of almost geologic history as it traces the intertwined fortunes of the Buendia family and of the mythical town of Macondo from their beginnings to their definitive ends. As I read this book, I could not imagine how Garcia Marquez could possibly provide any kind of satisfactory ending to this pellucid, rollicking history. Suffice it to say that there is no doubt of the ending when the reader reaches the final pages of the book. Gregory Rabassa's translation is so good that the author himself commented that he liked parts of the translation better than the original. Having read the book in both Spanish and English, I can state with complete honesty that I thought the translation was masterful, just as good as the book itself. He captures perfectly the tone and cadence of the Colombian coastal Spanish without any of the stilted quality that characterizes so many translations. If there were Nobel prizes for translators, I have no doubt that Rabassa would have received one.
Rating: 
Summary: You have to be fascinated by Gabriel
Review: to relate to his writing style, otherwise you'll find it dull and boring. Just as I did. I'm not that much of a fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books, because most, if not all, of them are written in a sense that the writer is making up the story as you read along... A sense of disorientation. I don't like that in a book. I like a story line, somthing to expect to... suspense, drama... not a vague idea as to what the writer thinks of his hero's (or his own?) miserable life. It's written beautifully, that's for sure. But it's most certainly not enough. Being able to write attractive and intellectual phrases does not make a bad story better. Especially if there's no story at all. I didn't like.
Rating:
Summary: The best book of the 20th Century?
Review: From the first to the last line, 100 Years of Solitude is utterly incredible. One of the few novels with the power to actually transcend the act of reading words from paper, it will lift you to a place you never knew existed. Curious onlookers will wonder at your zombified, open-mouthed state as you shout in your head: HOW DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?!!! THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE!!! The book charts the history of the Buendia family as they love, lie, fight and rule for a century in their magical settlement Macondo, deep in the South American jungle. And that's exactly what this book is - pure magic. My favourite book of all time, I doubt it will ever leave you either.
Rating:
Summary: The best book ever
Review: One Hundred .... was the first book by García Marquez I read, since then I have read all his work, but I will never be so impressed by a book as I was with this one, the moment I finished it, I began again. The last pages got me so much that I kept doing as Aureliano was doing at the moment, trying to skip some bits to reach the end and find out what was the mistery of the book. Is a masterpice that everyone should read at least three times. It might not be the most beautiful one I've ever read, that is for sure ' Love in the times of cholera', but it is, for sure, the most powerfull.
Rating:
Summary: no time no place
Review: This book is a marvel, composed of endless dreamlike visions, that open up like some strange, tropical, blood-tinged flower. It is so Latin American, yet it seems like the tale of how all things began--a timeless myth. And it's as natural and inevitable in the way it is told as those more ancient myths that live on although we know nothing of their inventors. Miraculous! Read it!
Rating:
Summary: Must read for everyone
Review: It took me until I was 21 years old until I finally read this novel. It was well worth it, and I have read it again since then. It is a little hard to read, but it is a classic. I suggest that you use the family tree in the front of the book. It is nearly impossible to keep track of all the characters. It may take you a little while to become completely imersed in the story, it starts out a little slow. But, it will be well worth it to keep going.
Rating:
Summary: Best of the Best: Peerless Translation of a Classic
Review: Until the English language undergoes considerable change, I don't think there will be any translators of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" other than Gregory Rabassa. I know enough Spanish vocabulary to sense a strong fidelity with the original text. This fidelity is consistently maintained throughout, but not through a word for word translation. Very few literal translations convey the meaning of a text. Rather, this text preserves meaning through what I'd call a holistic fidelity to the original words. In many cases, Rabassa does mirror the original, but in cases where a mirror rendering would interrupt the flow of thought, he aptly conveys the mood or image of the moment through carefully crafted syntax and phrasing. The text creates a moving picture in the mind once you're in the flow. You become sucked into a whirlwind of thought, that builds like an orgiastic frenzy right to an inevitable culmination. This is not an easy book to read, in English or Spanish. There's lots of narrative, long sentences, and dialogue is only used at certain key moments. The first fifty or sixty pages may seem trite or silly, but if you go back and read them after you've read the rest, you'll almost certainly be muttering to yourself. Remember Melquiades. Don't worry if you confuse the characters. The text will move you foward, and you'll understand. If not, go back after you've finished. Do not skip ahead at any point while you are reading. This book can change the way you look at fiction forever. Stick with it!
|
