Rating: 
Summary: Lays the groundwork for later works
Review: (***1/2) In Evil Hour is one of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's earliest works, through virtues of wit and compassion, the rich and dreamy portrait of a mythical town, in one way or another the book preludes to the most successful One Hundred Years of Solitude. In this short novel, incendiary lampoons infested a Columbian riverside town and traduced its most respected citizens. It began as Cesar Montero marched into the house of Pastor and gunned down its master after reading a crumpled note revealing secret of an affair. What followed was an ineluctable transformation of the town that deceit, murder, inveigle, and violence replaced the inveterate tranquility.The tooth pain-afflicted mayor, the doctor, and Father Angel joined in a cooperative effort to identify and locate the lampoon posters while the town strenuously clung onto the last spindle of sanity. Curfew was enforced and any suspected personnel was jailed for alleged lampoon spreading. A list of all residents who had not had lampoons put up on whom was compiled. Authorities turned to card reading to divine the origin of the traduces. The entire tale is inexorably redolent of a quiet, throbbing paranoia as the result of the lampoons, which haunted and rendered everyone insomniac. The book, though not as flourishing as its successor (One Hundred Years of Solitude), riddles with life trivialities, constant desires for confession and absolution, and ominous signs in the minute episodes that shape daily life. Though somewhat slow-moving and trite at parts, In Evil Hour has the virtues of wit and reveals the foundation upon which the author based in his later novels - vision of some mythical small town being haunted by bits and pieces and waves of political upheaval. Characters are mere instruments and vehicles with which Marquez wrote against government oppression. 2004 (26) © MY
Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Slow Plot
Review: I found this book to be pretty good, but it was lacking in terms of a plot, which made reading it tedious. I would recommend this for someone who is more of an avid reader. The book did give an interesting view of life in a small Colombian town but I feel that it would have been even better if I had been able to read it in its original Spanish. Overall, a good read.
Rating: 
Summary: No like the end
Review: I really did not like the end of this novel. I was expectin a better ending. I do not know, I just did not feel that it filled my expectations about the kind of ending that this author usally gives to his books. It was not espectacular. It let me with a lot of questions that I just woullike to have the answers. who put the paquines?, Was the alcalde o sheriff bad?
Rating: 
Summary: Disjointed plot doesn't satisfy
Review: I was expecting a lot more from this book. I didn't find it particularly interesting, I never connected with the plot, and I'm not even sure there is a plot. The events are all disjointed and mostly unrelated, I didn't find any "message" in it. Praise: could have been worse?
Rating:
Summary: a gripping idea, but not very well written
Review: It took me only a few hours to read this book. I find the idea of this book really interesting- it's not the magical realism that we know from other books by Marquez. However, no other book has drew me into its action in such a way that , while reading, I actually felt I was sharing the fear and the sense of terror that came over the citizens of the town. And that's something!
I didn't like the way it was written, though.The sentences were neither cohesive nor precise. Maybe it's the translation, although I must say I didn't read the English one.
Rating:
Summary: Well, all great artists have to start somewhere
Review: Let me just put it this way: I am glad that "In Evil Hour" is not the first Garcia-Marquez novel I had read, or I might not have picked another one up. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera" are absolute masterpieces. I suppose that "In Evil Hour" was just practice for the young Garcia-Marquez...I believe this was his first novel, and all great artists have to start somewhere.
Basically, this is a story of a South American town that is being undone by the posting of 'lampoons'. Martial law is declared, a fact that surprises exactly no one, as they have lived under tyranny and the empty promises of democrats their entire lives. It is a simple treatise on South American politics, and as such does manage to stand on its own, but it hardly seems that unique to me. Perhaps it was on the date of its original publication, circa 1960.
The cast of characters is too large to keep up with, and really none of the characters are even overly interesting. While the reviewers on the back of this book called it "dream-like", I would prefer vague and nondescript. From about page ten, the only thing I wanted to do was to not read this book anymore. I did manage to finish, but only becuase it's an extremely short book.
I give this book 2 stars, because we meet the fictional village of Macondo and Colonel Aureliano (literary legends made famous in "One Hundred Years of Solitude") for the first time. And also because, hey, it is after all Gabriel Garcia-Marquez I'm reviewing here.
Rating:
Summary: In Evil Hour
Review: Please stay away from 'In Evil Hour' by Garcia Marquez. It's one of the most incoherent, confusing and chaotic pieces of crap I have read since 'The English Patient' (which is supposedly like one of the best books in the world). And I am his fan, by the way.
I mean, Cesar Montero kills Pastor. There are lampoons all over the confused, messy, and crazy town. And....????? There are the dead mice in the church. A dead cow floats on the river and gives off a stench. The weather is incredibly hot. That is it. I completely missed the whole point about the conspiracies and secrecies and corruptions. Where are these things driving toward? Someone please enlighten me...
On the other hand, please read 'No One Writes to the Colonel', 'Innocent Erendira and Other Stories', 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' (a must-read) and 'Love in the Time of Cholera' by the same author. These are good.
Rating:
Summary: A Snapshot
Review: The initial reaction to reading this short novel is that the author forgot to finish it. The book has a plot and the reader gets drawn into it but the story seems to end ahead of the anticipated conclusion. The reader is left wanting answers and may go away disappointed. However, I believe Garcia Marquez only meant to give us a snapshot in the life of a community in turmoil. I believe he meant for us to be left in the dark. Perhaps he wanted to give an impression of a world where there is always conflict without resolution. This is a well-written book with an interesting cast of characters. It is, nonetheless, a snapshot; not the whole roll of film.
Rating:
Summary: A Snapshot
Review: The initial reaction to reading this short novel is that the author forgot to finish it. The book has a plot and the reader gets drawn into it but the story seems to end ahead of the anticipated conclusion. The reader is left wanting answers and may go away disappointed. However, I believe Garcia Marquez only meant to give us a snapshot in the life of a community in turmoil. I believe he meant for us to be left in the dark. Perhaps he wanted to give an impression of a world where there is always conflict without resolution. This is a well-written book with an interesting cast of characters. It is, nonetheless, a snapshot; not the whole roll of film.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but confusing.
Review: This book is quite difficult for me to rate, because it didn't really follow the conventional plot structure of most other books I've read. There are so many interesting things going on but they all seem unconnected. For example, Marquez begins describing the events surrounding a group of people, and when you are just beginning to understand what is happening to them, he whisks you away to someone somewhere else and while trying to work out the link between this and the first group, he sends you to a third
Another thing about this book is that it assumes you have some knowledge of the events that happened in South America, (even if this is a mythical town) which means that some things might not make sense to you if you didn't happen to grow up there. I was wondering why the dentist was hated by the mayor (apparently he was involved in some subversive activity), and what the significance of Los pasquines were. There were also some unresolved issues in the novel, like did Trinidad's parents eventually find out about her abusive uncle? What happened to the mayor? and what about the `missing' boy?
It was this incompleteness that ruined what was otherwise an excellent book for me. The moral of the story, you should know some background information before you begin In Evil hour. Unfortunately my copy of the book did not have any introductory notes. It's a good story, and I'd recommend it, but like I said, it might be confusing for those not from South America.
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