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Summary: Beyond most....
Review: This book seems to move beyond so many other books not only in its message, but also in the beauty of description. The intricacy and almost surrealism of the plot draws the reader in so intently its exhilarating. Also, the tone is calming as you learn of the Buendia family and their history. You will come away from this book with a sharper eye for the magical aspects of everyday life, as well as a few hours of absolute escape and bliss. Read it. You're not likely to regret it!
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Summary: Loved it!
Review: A co-worker of mine kept recommending this book to me and I kept putting off buying it, when one day I decided to go ahead and do it. It took me about 2 week to read it on the subway and every page kept me coming back for more. The way it is written and the way that the Buendia family keeps repeating history is fascinating and the last few pages of the book were breathtaking and sent chills up my spine. I will be sure to pick up Mr. Marquez's other masterpieces and adore those too.
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Summary: An exprience that lives with you for the rest of your life
Review: I read this book many many years ago when I was 14. I did not read it in English or Spanish. At the time I didn't know either one. I read it in Persian, but that did not diminish the effect it had on me at all. I guess the translation must have been good. I must have read the book some 12 times over the period of that year. And still, every once in while as I am driving my car, a passage from the book comes to my mind and takes me back to the magic that it was. I do not want to read this book again. I don't think that after getting accustomed to the reality of life around me my heart can handle such surge of emotions as it did then. If you haven't read it though, and you are able to pull yourself back to reality after finishing the book, I strongly recommend it.
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Summary: Lust, greed, war, death, ghosts. This book has it all!
Review: "It's as if the world were repeating itself," (Marquez, 298). Every year, every decade, every generation, lives are being repeated over and over again. The names Jose Arcadio and Aureliano appear throughout the Buendia family tree, causing the same mistakes and the same love wars. When Rebeca comes to live with the Buendia family as a very distant cousin, she is welcomed and grows to the age where she notices men. She notices Pietro Crespi first. So does her cousin, Amaranta. Amaranta swears that Rebeca will die before she marries Pietro, yet it is not Rebeca that dies, but Amaranta's sister-in-law, Remedios. The feeling of hate and revenge continues in Amaranta's life, even though Rebeca spurns Pietro and marries her cousin Jose Arcado (junior). There are many people in the family, many married to relatives, or in love with them, and many that have many illegitimate children. Such as Colonel Aureliano Bruendia, who has 17 sons, all with different mothers, and with the same name as their father. But in the end, everyone feel alone, everyone is alone, though they are surrounded by people. This is a fantasy book where one village can withstand the modern world, can live in its own corner without discovery. But when that discovery comes, all that is there is betrayal, loneliness, and war. Everyone is trying to be who they are, but they just keep repeating the mistakes that their grandfathers made, with no other side of the rainbow. There are many bad characters and people who become those who are despised most. But in the end, there is just solitude. A state of just being, if only for yourself. These people lead enchanted lives, only to die while urinating. They see the ghosts of those long gone and long forgotten. This adds to the theme of solitude. Where no matter how many brothers, sons, girlfriends you have, all that remains is you. Such is the case with the Colonel. His wife of about 12 years dies and his 17 sons are all murdered and that leaves only him. This book is not the best reading. The beginning begins to take off, and then there is about twenty pages of dull description and such. Keep reading the book and you'll get to the parts that are interesting to everyone. There are about four such parts, but there is so much action that one can be interested if they just keep reading on. The theme was held strong with great ideas, and everyone ended up lonely. For this one theme to seep through the entire novel is a great sign of a well-written book.
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Summary: one hundred years of solitude
Review: I've read this masterpiece 7 times since I was 17, now I am 24...Everytime I read it, I discover new things, even author's mistakes. I just love it. Should be read by everybody.
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Summary: I can't think of a good title at all
Review: The negative reviewers here seem, more or less, to want this book to move faster, or get to some kind of specific point, and are upset that it doesn't. So I'll make this suggestion, if you are reading to get to the end of a book, don't read this book; you won't deserve it. Read a Michael Chrichton book or something. On the other hand, if you are willing to be swept into an epic story that is written (and translated) with style and grace, plotted with a mature sense of wonder, and will make you weep, laugh, and seethe with anger, then read this one. No matter how many times I reach the last page of this book, I never feel like I've "finished" it. it always pulls me right back into it.
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Summary: YOU DON'T READ IT, YOU CONTRACT IT
Review: reading "100 years of solitude" is like contracting some wonderful, exotic disease. you see bizarre apparitions, babble in foreign tongues, and claw at the pages all through the night, as you howl in delight and then crumple with sadness. a life-altering experience.
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Summary: Golden Book
Review: This book is captivating. One can only read on, living the plot, experiencing the events, loving, hating, existing within it. A fabulous tale, swirling around the characters, taking the reader for a journey. Similar to a Steinbeck novel in it's themes and subjects, this book is a timeless great. The author has spun a story made of gold.
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Summary: The eye of a genetic hurricane
Review: It's a spell. You can't love it, hate it, or ignore it. You can only read it with sometimes teary eyes. An infection that's been dormant in a deep memory. It doesn't look at life, but gravity itself radiates from an infinitessimal center to a pulse as big as all time and all space. It goes with ease through the evidence of reality without making a religion out of it, and all the religions that have been stuck to it peal away. Reasons, pride, taboos, all imposed order floats harmlessly in the stratosphere, with only humanity down here, as if there were only one person playing with memories that don't make sense. Or as if there were only the memories with nothing to make them into sense. It's an experience that lingers from original incest to the final dust.
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Summary: 100 years to read, a bramble of impenetrable verbage...
Review: It takes a long time to learn about over fifty characters and this novel's meandering prose and run-on sentences don't make it any quicker. This is gritty, offbeat stuff for the serious Garcia-Marquez enthusiast. The reward readers must feel at the end is that they've endured a tedious, difficult novel, but not an enjoyable one.
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