Rating: 
Summary: A skilled rapist
Review: The acrid smell of sweat, dung and animals, coupled with the stifling heat, permeates the village of Macondo, where the novel takes place. Incest, murder, and suicide are everyday happenings, especially the first. Marquez pushes a dizzying and horrifying picture of the human condition, which left me feeling as if I had been raped. My options here seem to be either to dismiss Marquez as an extraordinarily skilful madman or to go mad myself. I choose the former. An ugly novel, not the less ugly for the undeniable talent with which it is executed. I do not recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Breathtaking!!!! An incredible experience!
Review: This book made me fall in love with reading again. It is by far the most enjoyable and life altering work of art I have encountered. Deeply rooted in South American culture and history, it gives the reader insight into a mystical and somewhat magical history. It's a true masterpiece, a modern clasic. READ THIS BOOK NOW....and thank me later!!!!
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of storytelling, you will not be disappointed.
Review: Garcia Marquez's writing makes the reader savor every sentence. It is poetry more than prose. This book does not tell a story as much as it conveys the feelings and emotions that make us human. Its "magical realism" seems to leap out of the page and take the reader to the land of Macondo, but anything I write here is inadequate to describe this piece of work, such a task is an impossibility.
Rating:
Summary: Emporer's new clothes.
Review: I'm one of those obsessives who forces himself to finish any book he starts so I plugged away hoping I'd experience the enlightenment all these other reviewers seem to have found...but I just didn't get it. Maybe it lost something in the translation, but I prefer a little dialog in my fiction...even in my heavy, pretentious intellectual and politically correct fiction. I don't mind the magic realism, but I do get bored with sentences that run on for two-plus pages without a period. Oh, well, chalk up the dissent to a libertarian crumudgeon redneck who's educated beyond his intelligence. But I was underwhelmed.
Rating:
Summary: Use of language
Review: I was surprised at how little was lost in the translation of this book. Garcia writes this novel as if it were poetry, he has a wonderful use of language that seems to braid mystical as well as humurous aspects into his writing. This is a novel that I won't forget and recommend readily.
Rating:
Summary: Best I've ever read.
Review: Even though this became one of the best classics in modern literature, it's not really "classical" or dated at all. If you like mystery, you will like it. If you like Sci-Fi, you will like it. If you like psychological novels, you will like it. If you like picturesque novels, you will like it. Anyway, you will difinitely like it!!!
Rating:
Summary: strangely unbelievable
Review: This is the finest piece of art since the bible. there are NO excuses - you have to read it. Brilliant. Breathtaking. Perfect.
Rating:
Summary: A gift to humanity
Review: This is a book written by a real master, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has made a very special book that captures your heart, mind and feelings. You will keep thinking of it through out your lifetime.
Rating:
Summary: Marquez Underground
Review: My favorite book; can't believe I didn't discover it before. When I started reading it during my commute, I noticed that there seems to be a sort of "Marquez Underground" going on. People I didn't know (on the train) would comment on my great choice of reading material, and my friends and relatives would often say "Hey, I just starting reading one of his books". It's almost as if everyone were discovering him at the same time.I'd say he's got Kundera's wit, combined with a bit of Victor Hugo's lyricism and his own distinctive animalistic charm; not to mention an astute and unique awareness of his Columbian setting.
Rating:
Summary: This book changed the way I look at literature and life
Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude is, essentially, the most important work of one of the 20th century's supreme masters of the written word. And it's also an incredible read. Garcia Marquez has somehow managed to balance an absolute clarity of symbolic thought with a kind of earthy pragmatism, the like of which I have not yet found. There's none of that stylish European existential angst in here; the kind which appears in, for example, Waiting for Godot (another work I adore, at least on an intellectual level). In this I think there's an important message to be found: when you get done reading this book, don't just sit on your butt and muse on the glories of the written word -- go out and DO something! Write a book of your own, compose some poetry, fall in love, what have you ... just alleviate that solitude, any way you can! In that alone, he already takes a more active role than most important authors in pushing for an active participation in society, as opposed to the kind of hermetic isolation from which so many of us suffer today. Additionally, for all the hullabaloo about Magic Realism, there's really nothing to fear; everything that happens within the book is completely consistent with what Garcia Marquez would have us believe about the world of Macondo and the Buendias (the main family of protagonists in the novel, if you haven't read it). And I believe that a mutual coherence between all the internal elements of a work of literature is far more important than its being consistent with what we're used to reading. And frankly, I found it hilarious. Cheesy justification aside, Garcia Marquez is a master of comic timing, and wit spills out of the sides of this magically realistic book as copiously as does significance. In any case, this book is just a perfect balance of everything that I wanted in literature but was never able to find -- clarity of thought without loss of depth, a philosophical bent without a loss of a sense of reality, and an absolute mastery of the use of symbolism. This last point is perhaps the most significant; not a single word in the book is wasted. While it is possible to enjoy the book without thinking about it too hard, almost every sentence contains some metaphorical double-entendre -- some easy to spot, some more difficult. Yada yada. Anyway, this book is absolutely wonderful, and there's no excuse (that I can think up) for avoiding this book besides an utter distaste for everything written in the 20th century. Or maybe a chronic lack of time in which to read. I hope this review bumps it back up to five stars on the rating meter; it was at four and a half, and that's just not fair. Well, now I will stop blathering.
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