Rating:  Summary: One of the Greatest Books Ever Written! Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my two favorite pieces of fiction ever written (the other is Lolita in case you were wondering). Rarely do you find an author that has such an amazing handle on language. Marquez seems to write effortlessly and his prose is never pretentious or forced. The best thing about the book, however, is that it's never boring. I have to admit that it's the only fiction book that I've read three times (and I'll probably read it again in a few years). Over the the last eighteen years I have recommended this book to dozens of people and those that have taken the time to read it have always told me they loved it.
Rating:  Summary: Top five Review: This book is on my top five list. I come from a Latin American background, and this book manages to create the feeling of being in Latin America and living with a Latin American family. The thought patterns, the logic, and the ready acceptance of extraordinary things are all so familiar to me, and yet I never would have been able to verbalize or recognize them had I not read this book. This is a classic...it should be required reading for all students. It is amazing.
Rating:  Summary: Remarkable work in any language Review: This is the book about which its author said that he preferred the English-language translation to his own Spanish original. Besides being a remarkable admission, it is a fine tribute to the translator who, quite frankly, deserves it. This is a tremendous book but might not be discernible as such to us English types, without the translation. Knowing friends have told me that the French version is also excellent. Still that is not to detract (and how could one?) from the original work. It is a wonderful story told with supreme control by an author in his prime. One could go on about the "magical realism" so dear to certain schools of thought about South American literature, but enough has been said elsewhere. Yet it is a unique writing style and the book is all the better for having this advantage. There is a landscape to explore and a cultural background to examine with which we northerners are not familiar. For some reason, the book reminds me partly of Castaneda - there's a dryness to the text as there is on the ground and the houses seem to be earth-floored dwellings needing a good broom to keep in them in order. Yet these are just vague impressions gleaned from a wider reading. I don't think anyone who enjoys reading should miss this. On a list of my favourite 100 books, this would be very high up.
Rating:  Summary: Very creative, very imaginative Review: No wonder this book has become an instant classic. It is. This is probably the best translated book that I've ever read. Very confusing, at first, but very imaginative. More of a fantasy than anything else, really. Much better the second time through. I loved the characters and the setting!
Rating:  Summary: one of my favs. Review: I had to read this book for school. I had bought the version in Spanish, but it was a little hard for me to tackle. Even though we had to read this book in a few days, maybe too fast. I loved it. Marquez uses magical realism in the neatest way. Please pick this book up and you won't be sorry!
Rating:  Summary: The amazing story of a remote village Review: When reading this epic I came to the conclusion that it is one of the most amazing stories I've ever read. It tells the story of the Buendia family and the creation of Macondo, a village where amazing things take place as a part of everyday life. We follow the Buendias from their fouding of Macondo and down to their descendents a hundred years later. This fiction portray several other interesting characters as well as they come to Macondo for a quick visit. Some more frequently than others. I read this in swedish so I won't comment the language.
Rating:  Summary: Possibly the greatest book ever written! Review: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE is by far the most important work of Latin American fiction written to date. I have read the book in both Spanish and English at least 8 times. Gregory Rabassa's translation is excellent as does not attempt to retell the story. This should definitely be required reading for the entire human race. With it's monumental ending, it will leave you craving for the world you have so abrubtly been shaken out of.
Rating:  Summary: Must read! Review: The first time I read this book I finished it in three days, because I just couldn't put it down. It's so engrossing you might come to believe the absurd things that take place in Macondo are possible (one guy's blood trickles across town until it reaches his mother's house in order to let her know he's dying; a woman so beautiful that men go crazy and die after they've seen her face; and it goes on like that) If you haven't read this book, buy it right now; if you have, read it again, you'll probably discover something you hadn't noticed before.
Rating:  Summary: The Mother of All Latin-American Novels. Review: This is the book I have to read at least once a year, once in Spanish, the next one in English (the translation is close to perfect, or as GGM generously says, better than the original). If one ever needed to confirm the relationship between force and violence, love and lust, family and acquaintances, this is the book once has to cherish... In the background there is the violence that even today affects Colombia, with the parties still called by the same names and characterized by the same non-ideology. The violence is perfectly described in its horror, in its non - cause, in its lack of purpose. It is as it existed in Bolivar's times and as causeless, goal - less but as pervasive as Bolivar described it and lost hope on it. As Bolivar predicted it, the USA is very much in the horizon, as represented by the United Fruit banana plantations and its zero-tolerance for workers unions. Family life with its strengths and excesses is presented here as nowhere else. The beauty of the human being and its nakedness, the difference between cute-ness and attractiveness in women, the enormous ability of women to carry life, and men, in their shoulders, is shown here like nowhere else. This novel easily explains the Nobel Prize of the author, his being such a great prophet in the world more than in his own land, his being consistently denied a visa to the USA, and the almost addiction of the New York Times Book Review to this author and his books. I have not seen any other author from Latin-America, or the Americas for that matter, reviewed so many times as the Colombian, Maestro Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Rating:  Summary: The Mother of All Latin American Novels. Review: This is the book I have to read at least once a year once in Spanish, the next one in English (the translation is close to perfect, or as GGM generously says, better than the original). If one ever needed to confirm the relationship between force and violence, love and lust, family and acquaintances, this is the book once has to cherish... In the background there is the violence that even today affects Colombia, with the parties still called by the same names and characterized by the same non-ideology. The violence is perfectly described in its horror, in its non - cause, in its lack of purpose. It is as it existed in Bolivar's times and as causeless, goal - less but as pervasive as Bolivar described it and lost hope on it. As Bolivar predicted it, the USA is very much in the horizon, as represented by the United Fruit banana plantations and its zero-tolerance for workers unions. Family life with its strengths and excesses is presented here as nowhere else. The beauty of the human being in its nakedness, the difference between cuteness and attractiveness in women, the enormous ability of women to carry life, and men, in their shoulders, is shown here like nowhere else. It easily explains the Nobel Prize of the author, his being such a great prophet in the world more than in his own land, his being consistently denied a visa to the USA, and the almost addiction of the New York Times Book Review to this author and his books. I have not seen any other author from Latin-America, or the Americas for that matter, reviewed so many times and with such deserved enthusiasm as the Colombian, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
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