Rating: 
Summary: Phenomenal
Review: Autumn of the Patriarch was a fantastic book, endemic of the classics, deep on many levels and actually better than One Hundred Years of Solitude. Much like Marquez's other work, he paints pictures and concepts in fragments of time, glimpses of memories and remembrances, and pieces of his characters personalities. The perspective and narration shift, sometimes intangibly and in mid-sentence. The effect is mosaic and powerful. He eloquently captures the essence of dictatorships and abuse and distortion of power from a distinctively non-Western perspective. The character in this novel is a composite of multiple Latin American dictators, written in the fantastic and surreal style that is Marquez and is similar to Rushdie.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply couldn't finish it...
Review: I am one of GGM's big fans. However, for some reason I found this book extemely difficult to read. Too much magical realism, if you ask me. I gave it quite a few shots and failed miserably.I recommend that before you bite into this one, you read some other books of his.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing, complex, brilliant!
Review: I loved the novel, had to read it very slowly, carefully, and piecemeal and each sentence that I read (actually all are a few pages long) recriprocated in my thoughts till I picked the novel to read the next few sentences. The novel by Marquez is a brilliant piece of imagery that blends the nauseating, dark, dying rule and regime of a tyrant with a poetic wordplay that arouses hatred, pain, sympathy and understanding for the patriarch. The writer has written a story that delights and anguishes at the same time. The protagonist is a dictator who rules with utmost authority, through fear and iron hand but at the same time is a slave of his own power, alone and old, diseased and dying. It takes some effort to grasp the narration style of the suthor, but once a feel is developed for this incredibly complex and intricate writing style, complex emotions and life like experiences enthrall in every sentence. I thought Rushdie was brilliant, Marquez beats him hands down!
This is at times a story of unfulfilled love, of solitude, of loneliness at the top, of the extremely spiteful shades of power, of grief that goes uncured, unhealed, of superstitions, lies and naked ugliness of life in corrupt regimes. Artistically, the novel is an endless potrait, with each part beautifully drawn, colored, etched, put together in perfection after painting each part with a tremendous skill, imagination and ability that is both rare to find and emulate. I am sure every avid reader will be as affected when he reads this incredible novel.
Rating:
Summary: Surreal, horrific indictment of dictatorship
Review: I personally think that "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is overrated; I am not particularly enamored with the whole genre of magical realism. Nevertheless, Marquez uses that style to perfection in "Autumn of the Patriarch," creating a nightmarish world in which a sadistic, perhaps mentally deranged tyrant rules over a small Caribbean country. I liked the surrealist style in this book because there really is something surreal about totalitarianism. The aura of omniscience that lends legitimacy to most dictatorships is based on nothing but lies. From Joseph Stalin to Idi Amin to Kim Jong Il, tyrants throughout history have cultivated images of invincibility, machismo, wisdom, and righteousness to justify their authority. I consider such monstrous perversions of the truth perfectly reprehensible, especially considering that they are usually used to legitimize the most heinous crimes. In this book, Marquez cuts to core of totalitarinism, revealing that underneath all the grandeur lies nothing but a sick, despicable old man. The imagery in this book is grotesque to say the least, but for that reason it remains embedded in your memory. In one unforgettable scene, the dictator's lookalike is killed. The nation, unaware that the leader even has a double, thinks that he himself is dead. There is widespread jubilee on the streets. The leader reappears in public, portraying the whole event as a resurrection from the dead. He naturally slaughters those who cheered at the false news that he had died. There are many other scenes just as memorable that would take too long to relate. I guess I should conclude with the warning that this book is structured unlike any book that I have encountered. There are no paragraph breaks, the dialogue is not italicized, and the sentences consistently run for several pages. This is not so daunting as it sounds, though. The book actually does not read that difficult once you get going. It is not an easy read, no doubt, but the reward definitely exceeds the effort required.
Rating:
Summary: Pure genius
Review: I read this book in the original Spanish and it amazes me that the same person that could write Love in the times of Cholera which deals with love, could also write a book this violent and dark. This novel is a masterpiece because it illustrates one of Gabo's best traits as a novelist, his ability to describe. The dictator's name is never actually revealed but the reader is thrust into his paranoid, paralyzed world of pain and suffering. He's seperated from the rest of humanity. It becomes apparent that the dictator's evil and hatred overtake him. It's obvious that Gabo used his experiences with tyrants such as Franco, Stalin, Trujillo, and Castro while writing this novel. They would serve him well as the main character of this novel is a combination of all of the aforementioned leaders. The traits of the dictator are not just limited to leaders of state but also to anybody who allows corruption, greed, and violence overtake them. In the end, this novel is difficult to read but a neccesary oeuvre of one of the best Spanish language novelists of our time.
Rating:
Summary: Everywhere in Latin America: The Memory of Tyrannical Times
Review: If anyone tells you, as if revealing some grand aleatory secret, that this book, unlike the other Marquez books, should be skipped because of its stylistic ans structural difficulties, please imagine a French poodle at the park vehemently yapping bark, I think, barkbarkbark, this book is hard. Give the dog a bone and a nice pat on his fluffy head. Then keep on walking. The structure and style of this book do have a purpose. Moreover, it is very readable, but if you came here quickly after reading "One Hundred Years," please make sure you have at least read (and enjoyed) some Woolf, Faulkner, and more recently, Saramago (a reader's lack of exposure to certain styles should not be a reason to limit its usage). In 1958, upon witnessing the fall of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela, G.G. Marquez decided he would one day write a book about a dictator, an ineluctable subject for most Latin American writers who had lived under the messianic absurdities of dictators and peremptory "presidencialismos" (there are four big books about dictators already). For ever now, Messianic leaders have surfaced, almost without exception, in every Latin American country. And the narrator of the "Autumn of the Patriarch," like Marquez who had thought about writing about dictators for 10 years before writing this book, like an immortal that has traveled to every one of these afflicted countries, back and forth throughout time, compiles in his narrative not the history or histories of dictatorships, but the memory of them all, the yearning of a whole continent ravaged by dictators and the wistful hope that they, a human plague, will forever vanish. The beginning of the book supports this contention: "Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace, destroyed with their pecking the wired screens on the windows and removed with their wings the time stuck inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke from its lethargy of centuries with the warm and tender breeze of a great dead man and of rotted greatness." [better translation courtesy of Mauro J. Cardenas] And all throughout the book the narrator hopes but doubts that the dictator is really dead: "We knew that no evidence of his death was final, because there was always another truth behind the truth." Read this way, as the tale of a narrator that has seen them all, the structure of the novel comes together, and the long sentences, the midsentence changes in point of view, and the seemingly excessive surrealism, become not just parts of an "artistic" text: they are the thousands of Latin Americans that in their dreams, in their sad recollections of tyrannical times, had fiercely hoped that the plague will end.
Rating:
Summary: The Ineluctable Memory of Latin American Dictatorships
Review: If you are reading the reviews for this book, and certain phrases-'painful read,' 'if restructured it might be better,' 'why such a difficult style'-make you weary about reading it, please imagine a French poodle at the park vehemently yapping bark, I think, barkbarkbark, this book, is hard. I suggest you give the dog a bone and a nice pat on his fluffy head. Then keep on walking. The structure and style of this book DO have a purpose. Moreover, it is very readable, but if you came here quickly after reading "One Hundred Years," please make sure you have at least read (and enjoyed) some Woolf, Faulkner, and more recently, Saramago (a reader's lack of exposure to certain styles should not be a reason to limit its usage). In 1958, upon witnessing the fall of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in Venezuela, G.G. Marquez decided he would one day write a book about a dictator, an ineluctable subject for most Latin American writers who have lived under the messianic absurdities of dictators and peremptory "presidencialismos" (there are four big books about dictators already, and yes, I too have thought about writing one). For ever now, Messianic leaders have surfaced, almost without exception, in every Latin American country. And the narrator of the "Autumn of the Patriarch," like Marquez thinking about dictators for 10 years before writing about them, like an immortal that has traveled to every one of these afflicted countries, back and forth throughout time, compiles in his narrative not the history or histories of dictatorships, but the memory of them all, the yearning of a whole continent ravaged by dictators and the wistful hope that they, this human plague, will forever vanish. The beginning of the book supports this contention: "Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace, destroyed with their pecking the wired screens on the windows and removed with their wings the time stuck inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke from its lethargy of centuries with the warm and tender breeze of a great dead man and of rotted greatness." And all throughout the book the narrator hopes but doubts that the dictator is really dead: "We knew that no evidence of his death was final, because there was always another truth behind the truth." Read this way, as the tale of a narrator that has seen them all, the structure of the novel comes together, and the long sentences, the midsentence changes in point of view, and the seemingly excessive surrealism, become not just parts of an "artistic" text: they are the thousands of Latin American that in their dreams, in their sad recollections of tyrannical times, had fiercely hoped that the plague will end.
Rating: 
Summary: Works for me.
Review: It's inevitable that this book should be somewhat off-putting compared to One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera--Autumn of the Patriarch isn't really meant to be a 'pleasant' read. It is a grim portrait of the title character, and other characters come and go without having inner lives of their own; they have relevance only insofar as they intersect with his life. It is without a doubt one of the least novelistic novels you will ever read--indeed, in many ways it's more like a prolonged character study than a novel. Some people complain about the style in which the book is written--no paragraph breaks, few chapter breaks, long run-on sentences (the final chapter--fifty pages or so--is one massive sentence), perspective shifts mid-sentence and even mid-clause--but the truth of the matter is that, although this can become a little bit wearing at times, it is by no means 'difficult.' Not in the sense that Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow, and Absalom, Absalom! are difficult. It can occasionally be disorienting, but in general it's always pretty easy to tell what's going on, and the style results in a surreal, dreamlike atmosphere that, I think, is perfect for describing the General's long, nightmarish reign. Sure, it could have been written in a more conventional style, and it could well have still been a good book, but Garcia Marquez's decision to push narrative boundaries provides just the right feel. After all, the General is a composite of many Meso and South American tyrants, and to couch his reign in more concrete, everyday terms would have taken away some of his universality (his selling of the Caribbean is a clear demonstration of this, as well as one of the most striking literary metaphors you'll ever encounter). He isn't really a human being; he's an implacable, negative force. For all his flailing around, occasionally making half-hearted and futile efforts to change, his life ultimately has no other meaning. Autumn of the Patriarch certainly isn't the best of Garcia Marquez's movels to start with (that would be One Hundred Years of Solitude, of course), but it's an important part of his oeuvre, even if it's not as 'fun.' I recommend it to literate people everywhere.
Rating:
Summary: Community of Voice
Review: Marquez' story is its own herniated testicle. It is over inflated, and it may even be our badge of unusual honor to finish it. The text is the patriarch, every voice in the text is indistinguishable from each other, and we readers are its constituency.
In any case, how else does one narrate a dictatorship? Nice and pat and all publisher-friendly? So that "reader response" will vote in the author's or characters' favor?
These may be some helpful questions to ponder briefly when the point in the novel where you're scratching your head is reached.
After a bit more reading, maybe a little like A Clockwork Orange, Marquez' delivery begins to make sense. After all, why does he have to obey the grammatical and lexical conventions of the day? Autumn of the Patriarch is an act of totalitarianism in literature: perhaps even suggesting what's in store for hard-nosed, patriarchal purveyors of what literature is, what its purpose is, who should write it, whose work should be considered for publication, and what is lawful in print.
These are just some speculations, and there's much to speculate. Like One-hundred Years of Solitude, Autumn is steeped in fantastic, endless and rich descriptions, the contemporary likes of which are found only in a Marquez novel. Unlike the former, though, I would not call this piece endearing or captivating in the same way. It's a much darker piece; but it's Marquez, unmistakably. I would also not recommend reading this at bedtime as a sleep-aid, for though Marquez' grammar eventually becomes perfectly clear, there are few convenient places to quit reading. Pages and pages pass without periods. And period stops are for easy thoughts--like mine, stopping here.
Rating:
Summary: Pure genius
Review: The people who have said this book is difficult probably just weren't prepared for it. This is second only to 100 Years as Garcia's most amazing work. Of course it's challenging. Of course much of the book is atmospheric--that's the point. It's told from the point of view of an entire country, a country that's been raped and starved and brutalized for so long it can barely remember who it is. It's a portrait of a complicated love/hate, co-dependent relationship between a nation and its caudillo. Don't try to read this if you're expecting something light for the plane, and don't read it as your first Garcia Marquez book either. I'd start with Love in the Time of Cholera, then more to 100 Years of Solitude, and then read this a year later, when you finally understand 100 Years. This book demands nearly as much attention and respect as Joyce; be ready to give it.
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