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Summary: Novel award winning book...
Review: This book was the first of his kind: "magic realism". If you're a serious reader, you won't miss this one. I bet you'll love it. By the way, the author has writed a lot of excellent books also: "Del amor y otros demonios", "El amor en los tiempos del colera", "Doce cuentos peregrinos"
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Summary: Unraveling the trail of clues
Review: One of the most compelling scenes in "100 Years" is Arcadio stuck against the wall, shot within Rebeca's horrified glance. Aureliano escapes by the intervention of Jose Arcadio, who in turn is shot by Rebeca. The trickle of blood has trailed in its seventeen-verb course through town to be discovered by Ursula just as she is about to separate the thirty-six eggs for the baking bread. Then Ursula like Theseus follows the trail in reverse, discovering both victim and murderer. As readers we too pursue a trail of clues to unravel the family saga.
Both firing squad scenes form a gruesome irony on a potent symbol of Hispanic culture, the ubiquitous crucifix. Somehow I had not expected to witness, as reader, either of those scenes. It is almost a "Ben Hur" effect, that the witnessing of an execution sets one to thinking and in his case believing. On the other hand, Aureliano appears to be the main protagonist, and thus his death is hard to believe in, despite all the foretellings. Several of those little warnings deviate to the effect of "years later, when he was an old man," so that his death by firing squad is incongruous. But other "facts" we accept have already been violated and therefore it is not impossible.
There is something amusing about breaking oneself away from "100 Years," ending at Ursula's comment upon getting a letter from Aureliano in Cuba that he will spend Christmas at "the remote ends of the earth," to turn to Alexander Humboldt's real-life "Voyage to the Equatorial Regions" from the Canaries across the Atlantic to some of the very places (whichever they are) traversed by Aureliano. Indeed, "100 Year"'s insistence on anonymity of place (except for the obviously fictitious Macondo) implies its events can happen practically anywhere in South America. The not infrequent mention of the Caribbean, the seasonal rains and the tropical forests specifically suggest southern Venezuela or Brazil or anywhere within Garcia Marquez's Colombian homeland.
Even so, we should not take geophysical signs too literally in this work. The very mixture of alleged facts allows us to conceive of a Pan American (or Pan South American) ethos, a world of chaos in which the whole world is one's own tiny village, in which one's life is but a process in an entire generation and an entire genealogy. In turn, the genealogy is played out in the entire lineage, each individual living out both the past and the future.
Then, too, Garcia Marquez forces us to examine our own assumptions of reality and civilization, to examine microscopically every detail we consider normal and reassess it from every angle. What are familial relations? What is war? What is communication? What is love? What is peace? What is the development of a town? What is manly honor and womanly virtue? What is philosophy? What is a noble idea vs. a silly charlatanism?
All these and more are facets of life that he turns upside down and inside out -- the priestly levitation is one of the more literal examples -- to reveal ever more intimacy of the individuals involved and ever more that makes us question our very selves. To read Garcia Marquez is to journey into the heart of oneself, even as Humboldt travels into the very geographical territory of Garcia Marquez. It is a fascinating quest, each author enriching the other and both enriching me. Garcia Marquez assembles such an oddball amalgam of verisimilitude in the details, while at the same time presenting such an outrageous sequence of events, that the whole notion of history and of fiction (as in Borges) is called into question.
It is interesting to see how the people of Macondo hear war and rumors of war from all parts, how contradictory reports reach them, only to be reversed by even more mutually contradictory notices. All of that is so typical of a world without mass media, yet to turn on CNN and read a newspaper account or two creates the same chaos. The only difference is the quality of the presentation, the so-called reliability of the sources. It is just a game whose sophistication has been improved, not -- I think -- its essence.
At the same time of the limited communication of Macondo, Humboldt reveals his marvel at the wonders of "modern progress and civilization" (c. 1800) that allow residents of the remotest pampas of Argentina to communicate via mail with their fellow espanoles in Mexico and Florida. Together, these two concepts of communication, occurring more or less simultaneously since the war in "100 Years" seems to happen just after the great south American revolutions, comprise a dramatic irony to the state of mail I find in today's Venezuela. To send a letter from Caracas to Punto Fijo (some 200 miles) sometimes takes thirty days, while in Humboldt's day a twice-monthly trip was made from Buenos Aires to Spain. In "100 Years" news often travels faster, but always with a question of reliability. The supreme irony is that all is already foretold, right back at home.
This is a book I will read over and over again to savor the richness of its poetic tones and the multiple layers of ironic and dramatic richness. It is like an English trifle, to be visually admired as a whole then to be nibbled away at in bites, each time savoring a new flavor and an unexpected taste
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Summary: A Truly Gifted Contemporary Author
Review: One of the greatest novels of our time. If you haven't read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" you are missing the sensory journey of a lifetime. After you have experienced Marquez you can't help but view the world a little differently! Don't miss this opportunity to enter the mind of a literary genuis. You will want more and his compelling collections of short stories is an excellent follow-up. Immerse yourself in the increadable reality of Marquez
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Summary: When the magic is the story itself
Review: I find it strange that I liked this book even when basically it nevers follow the strict literature guidelines: timelines that overlap, long sentences with so many ideas, repeatedly telling the end of each character even before his/her story starts, supernatural events that never gets any explanation, and so on.
Yet to his credit, Marquez weaves a spell, stories that are so outrageous that they can only be true. The solitude of the title that underlies the family saga is rarely mentioned yet is apparent it's a reflection of our own solitude; when your dreams become the direct opposite and stays that way.
Marquez is Melquaides - writing in code which we can only decipher at life's end. It is truly a great novel.
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Summary: Total.
Review: A rare book in that it is complete. I thought once that novels only served to reflect humanity's incapability to fully express itself. This novel proves otherwise. It is full like some narcotic sex liqueur, staying with you for several lifetimes. And it is solid, fluid, prose poetry. And it is tragic and fantastic and comic and real. A text of religious importance in that it reflects all that is strong and all that is weak and all that is human--it is wit and blood and infinite, melancholy joy
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Summary: One town, One family, One life
Review: When I first picked up this book to read, it was because I was frankly quite intrigued by Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' and wanted to know more about Magic Realism. Until I finished this book, I could not get an inkling of what the author had tried to convey. On the surface, it seemed to me that this was the story, albeit an unusual one, of the life of a family, with a town in the background. It began as a small settlement and grew into a town and finally got destroyed in a Biblical storm. The story was narrated like a fairy tale, with a minimum of dialogues and apparently very little attention to the intricate details of characterization that you normally find in other great novels. And then, other novels don't generally span five generations and even if they do, don't evoke such phantasmagoric imagery. In a nutshell, I was confused.
The first thing that made me sit up and take notice was the imagery that the climax evoked. The part where Aureliano (the protagonist at that time) deciphers the parchments that chronicle the life of the family, and deciphers the lines that describe him in the act of deciphering them, and then realizes that he would never leave the room after he has finished... I was reminded of something I had heard about a man's life flashing before him an instant before his death. The pieces began to fall in place - the phrase "the house of mirrors (or mirages)" took on a new, and much more significant meaning in the scheme of things. The whole story began to appear to me in an entirely new light then.
I realized then that 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' was not a novel about Latin America, or about a town or about a family - it was about a human being's life, from infancy till death. It was about the different things that he discovers about the world and about himself at various stages of his life - the excited discovery of the outside world in his childhood, the youthful vigour of adolescence, the kaleidoscopic stages of adulthood, the serenity of old age, and that last breath of life, vigour and stormy consciousness before death. It was an experience as enthralling as life itself is. The book is always at the back of my mind - every day reveals something new about the book that had been hitherto undiscovered. This book is a constant voyage of discovery - a must read for anyone who is looking for a meaning to existence.
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Summary: Better Than Walt Disney World (Really!)
Review: During the summer of 1986 I visited DisneyWorld with my parents and, by a strange conicidence, ran across one of my father's very good friends from Puerto Rico. At that instant, I was carrying a book recommended by a friend of mine: One Hundred Years of Solitude. I had barely started to read it, and my father's friend told me that I would never read any book better than Garcia Marquez' initimate history of the Buendia family. And by golly, he was right. I heeded his advice and read the book in a harried daze while waiting in line for the rides at DisneyWorld and Epcot. And when I finished it, I was so amazed. I never knew that writing could be so dazzling, that a novel could be so endearing and challenging. In fact, this book made me fall in love with the delicate microcosms of novels, with the passion and power of words. And to this day, One Hundred Years of Solitude has been a steady and well-worn companion. I took the book with me to college, to law school, and even on trips to the Carribbean, South America and Mexico. In times of stress or hardship, I would read about Macondo and its generations of inhabitants, and suddenly be touched. I doubt if I will ever read a book again that has inspired, affected, even changed me as much as this book. The book and I are good friends; and as I sit and write this review, it sits there, on my bookshelf, its tattered and weatherbeaten spine enticing me once again: "Read me, old friend. Read me once again."
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Summary: Powerful imagery & characters, breathtaking conclusion!
Review: A fascinating story of very different lives in a remote latin 'gypsy' culture. Having read both the spanish and english editions with equal engagement, I can say that the english translation is outstanding. It's an amazingly written tale of drama and imagination with a conclusion more driving and powerful than I have ever before had the pleasure to read. Your head will spin at then end. A true 10 and a must read
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Summary: One of the best novels of the past 100 years
Review: Marquez creates a unique fictional world, a town called Macondo in the middle of the South American jungle.
The language is lush, the characters unique. Marquez finally trusts the reader to accept fantasy and reality as equal partners in an ongoing unfolding of life.
This is the only novel I've read four times. It works like magic, like great wine, like a wonderful piece of music.
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Summary: MAKES OTHER BOOKS READ LIKE NURSEY RHYMES
Review: 100 Years of Solitude is simply the best book ever written. It is a magnetic story that draws you into the magical lives of the Buenida family, and keeps you there until the end. Every person who is literate should read this novel. When I finished this book not only was I surprised by the ending, but I did not want to read any other books. I wanted to start over, just to read something that was equally good
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