One Hundred Years of Solitude

Rating:
Summary: Ground-breaking
Review: 100 years of solitude broke ground in Latin Amercian literature, by taking it out of its regional dimension into international recognition. Garcia Marquez masterfully told tale of the birth and death of a family revealed to the world the quality of Latin American writers, and consolidated the genre of magical realism. It is an essential book to anyone who wants to look at Latin American literature. At least I have read it about 15 times and find funnier and sadder every time

Rating:
Summary: My favorite book of all time
Review: I am an English professor, a serious reader, a lover of life, a happy person when I'm not miserably depressed, and I'm not one for overstating events, opinions or art. So I'll put it simply: As soon as 1999 comes around and we have to start reading everybody's top 5, top 10, top 100 lists, I'll sit down and make my own, but it will have to do only with books. Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying" will surely be on the list; Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "The Sun Also Rises" will be there, too. Some living people might even make my list: Updike's first and last Rabbit books will get serious consideration, for example. You won't find Mailer or Bellow or Doctorow, but their dead comrade Malamud could sneak in. But at the top of the list--all alone, with no competition at all--will be this magnificent work by Garcia-Marquez. It is sweeping and powerful in a way that no other work of fiction even dares to be. I have probably sold twenty or thirty copies of this book in airport bookshops. Whenever I have seen anyone flip through the book, trying to decide whether or not it is worth the money, I have handed that person my business card and told him or her to buy the book--Just buy the book, I've said, and if you don't like it, write to me. I'll send your money back to you. Many have written, but no one has asked for a refund. Many send me Christmas cards each year. Just buy the book. My e-mail address is attached. Let me know what you think. The book is magical.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Novel Ever Written!
Review: This is a masterpiece! Magical and powerful, the story of four generations of Buendias will haunt your soul. You will never forget them, their lives, and their losses. I have read it three times and plan to read it many more times because it is a timeless story, and each time is a new journey....

Rating:
Summary: One disappointment after another
Review: I've read a lot of the reviews for this book and none of the writer's state very well why they liked it. Opening to a random page in the bookstore, I discovered delicious prose which gave me a sense not only of being there with these people but of the history they endured. And yet.... As I actually read the story, I felt increasingly disappointed. Marquez gives me a family of people who make one stupid mistake after another. I never connected with any of the characters, because right around the time I might begin to feel an affinity with a character, he or she would either do something stupid or die. I really wanted to care about these people, but Marquez seemed determined to create characters for whom I must not care. Worst of all, at the end he betrayed the sense of history he so beautifully constructed throughout the book by wiping it off the face of the Earth. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is worth reading for the descriptive skill Marquez displays, but don't expect to be captivated by a character or uplifted by the story.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Book Ever Published: It will Exist Forever
Review: Although the sequencing of this story is a bit confusing, the story itself is like a magnet that absorbs the reader into the town of Macondo and into the lives of the Buendias. Each Buendia lives their own unique lives, with some of them being travelers, and some secluding themselves from the rest of the world. The viewpoint of this book is through the eyes of the the town as the citizens see themselves growing into modernization with the discoveries of Melquiades and Jose Arcadio Buendia, and the Banana Company, who will later haunt the town with it's massacre. The uniqueness of the lives of the family and the residents of this town has made this book a metaphor for the reaches of imagination, and fixes the reader's brain to think perceptively about life.

Rating:
Summary: BEAUTIFULLY TRANSLATED
Review: I was thouroughly impressed at how beautifully this book was translated,nothing was lost. This is an amazing story, not only does every generation weave together so well, there is not a moment of boredom when reading. I loved this book. It was wonderfully written, and the characters came alive. I recommend everyone read this book!

Rating:
Summary: Compelling; startling; amazing
Review: The first time I read this masterpiece, it was a requirement for one of my college literature classes. This could have proved unfortunate, for as anyone knows, being 'forced' to read a book lends an unfairness to the possible greatness of the piece. Anyhow, this did not turn out to be the case in "A Hundred Years" -- I read it once for class and then a second and a third time and I plan to read it many more times throughout my life. Words cannot bring justice to Marquez's ability to paint words and phrases on parchment with the meticulous care of Chopin or Michaelangelo. It is simply four-hundred plus pages of wonderfully constructed poetry and, in my estimation, the greatest novel ever written.

Rating:
Summary: A mirage of life
Review: One Hunderd Years of Solitude left me disturbed.
From the happy tale of two young lovers, who carve
out a new village for themselves, to the incestous
account of the last descendants of the family,
the book has the power to unnerve the reader. The
story rambles, so that you feel that time is
suspended in Mocando. And yet as characters
grow older, you notice that time is in fact moving
in a circle. The same members of the family are reborn in the
Arcadia family, reincarnated as the 100 years pass
by. The forces compelling them to act as they
do, attract and repel you at the same time. You
try and understand the events and the
characters, but sheer incredulity and awe as
the story unfolds, leaves you stupefied. I am
not sure I love the book like I do "Jane Eyre"
or admire it like I do "War and Peace".
But I am powerfully attracted by it, and I'd like to
read it again - if only to marvel at a magical
family, banished to one hunderd years of solitude.
Rating:
Summary: Macondo y Columbia: Mirrors of Life
Review: As we take this mystical adventure through the swamps, banana plantations, and the hearts of several generations of Macondans in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, we must see that in this journey lies not only the wit of a great story teller but also the allegory of our modern world in a candor all too true to Marquez's tumultuous Columbia. The recent history of internal dispute among the different political factions, drug traffickers, and the presidency may find an allegorical reflection through some of the fictional characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude just as Dante's Inferno gleaned the political and theological charicatures of his time. It is and will be called one of our centuries greatest works from a man who's literary voice screams "Life!" into the printed word

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular
Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude is without question my favorite book of all time. The story is both engrossing and compelling in it's humanity and magic. Having read all Marquez's books & stories I always come back to this book and am surprised anew by it's richness. Character tie ins with other books & stories (Erendira for example) give one a larger perspective on Marquez's world. Like Catch-22, The Cider House Rules and John Le Carre's Smiley trilogy, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a book I've been reading once a year and will continue to do so. A must

<< 1 .. 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 >>