Rating: 
Summary: DAZZLING AND MESMERIZING
Review:
The twelve stories that comprise Gabriel Garcia Marquez's STRANGE PILGRIMS, on one level, are tales of fantastic adventures and encounters experienced by Latin Americans both in their native lands and as they make their way around the world. On a wholly different level, these stories address the more universal and sometimes disturbing question of human identity and destiny. On whatever level a reader absorbs them, they provide first-rate provocative entertainment as well as ample evidence of why Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981. Marquez is celebrated worldwide for his skillful use of magical realism but in these stories moves beyond the formula to create some of the best work from one of the best writers in the business. Inhabiting these tales are saints, clairvoyants, ex-presidents, specters, and mesmerizing portraits of such famous individuals as Pablo Neruda and Aime' Cesaire. This book dazzles and satisfies in ways that few books can.
Aberjhani
author of I MADE MY BOY OUT OF POETRY
and ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE
Rating:
Summary: Colombian Magical Realism Hits Europe
Review: I wonder if Garcia-Marquez is capable of writing a bad story. Certainly this selection of twelve are like polished gemstones. They might not be shiny or scintillating, but they are so solid, so satisfying. Each of them centers around Latin Americans, mostly Colombians, and their strange experiences in Europe. Back in South America, they move in familiar patterns, they feel at home, but in Europe, unknown and unseen forces affect them, they are prey to the pitfalls of strangeness, they can't see anything coming until it runs them over. While the gigantic geography, turbulent history, and luxuriant and untamed nature of South America fosters magical realism in authors, at least in Garcia-Marquez and some of the other greats, they also produce characters very much larger than life. Europe has always seemed to me a much tamer place, having reduced uncertainty over centuries--- more set in its ways, with fewer surprises, established, sedate. Garcia-Marquez perhaps sees it in a similar way and it unnerves his Latin American protagonists. An ex-dictator lives in a student garret, sells his jewels, and undergoes a useless operation. A woman disappears "by accident" into a mental institution and a playboy dithers in a cheap Paris hotel, not knowing a word of French, while his young wife dies in a hospital. A postal clerk spends years trying to see the Pope to convince him of his daughter's saintly qualities. He lugs the deceased but uncorrupted daughter around in a huge case. An aged ex-prostitute feels death is at her door, but actually it is something else. Nobody really feels at home, nobody can trust their feelings, because everything works differently. Europe isn't exactly an alien place for them, but they are, each time, unwitting victims of the unexpected.
Garcia-Marquez is one of those authors who seem to write about ordinary people whose lives take strange twists. But the worlds they inhabit, the people around them, the very fabric of their existence seem to me utterly fantastic. His talent lies not in presenting ordinary life, but extraordinary life. You accept a little more, a little more until suddenly you find yourself believing in the unbelievable. In the great warrens of Western civilization, but also in the daily grinds of Asia, Africa, or Latin America, life may take interesting paths, or curious twists, but for the most part, it is very predictable. These stories all have only the veneer of predictability; underneath the realism is full of spooky holes. Yet, that is not only due to a magical tone as in novels like "The Autumn of the Patriarch" or "One Hundred Years of Misunderstanding", it is due to the author's constant combination of known daily life with near-fantasy. You can hardly draw the line between them, so closely does he knit. Great stories by a truly great talent. Read them.
Rating:
Summary: Eerily wonderful
Review: Although these stories were at time confusing, I kept feeling like I needed to read them again. Each time I finished a story, I felt like the characters needed to be heard over and over, that if I closed the book, their individual fears would take over them. It is rare that books can convince you of a fictional character's reality. I read this book for a summer reading project going into 12th grade and wondered after finishing it 'why did they wait so long to assign this? Why didn't I read it on my own?' Awesome book, definitely a must-read.
Rating: 
Summary: Soaring With Garcia-Marquez
Review: An incredibly inventive and thought-provoking collection, "Strange Pilgrims" is reminiscent of Milan Kundera's "Book Of Laughter and Forgetting", as well as Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried". Constructed as interweaving short stories, these twelve misfit pieces all deal with moving themes: loneliness, death, travel, the otherworldly nostalgia that these phenomena provoke, and ultimately the sadness of being lost in your own experiences. Like Kundera's "Laughter and Forgetting", "Strange Pilgrims" does not attempt to draw lucid conclusions between its seemingly unrelated characters. Instead, Garcia-Marquez simply allows the reader to develop his own relationship to the text. At times, "Strange Pilgrims" achieves what Garcia-Marquez so eloquently refers to when speaking of writing in the book's introduction-"the closest a human can get to the experirence of levitation." Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: The twilight zones of Garcia Marquez
Review: As I read "Strange Pilgrims," the collection of short stories by Colombian-born Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I was reminded of the classic television series "The Twilight Zone." Like some of the best episodes in that series, many of the stories in "Strange Pilgrims" are rich in irony and psychological intrigue, and incorporate elements of the macabre and the fantastic. And many of the stories have twist endings. This collection has been translated into English by Edith Grossman.These stories deal with Latin Americans on voyages, for various reasons, to Europe. The book thus has a trans-Atlantic, international feel. Highlights of the collection include "Bon Voyage, Mr. President," about a deposed head of state seeking medical attention in Switzerland; "The Saint," a supernatural tale of a father seeking canonization of his daughter from the Pope; the creepy "The Ghosts of August"; and the grotesque "Seventeen Poisoned Englishmen." Throughout the book Garcia Marquez presents many images that are beautiful or disturbing, but often memorable: a drowned man floating with "a fresh gardenia in his lapel," a moray eel nailed to a door, a bedspread stiff with the dried blood from a murder. An added bonus is the appearance of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda as a fictional character in one of the tales. "Strange Pilgrims" is a varied collection of weird treats from a master storyteller.
Rating: 
Summary: Strange Pilgrims
Review: Firstly, be forewarned that this book is very much unlike Garcia Marquez's novels. Also, it is pale in comparison to his collected stories (Innocent Erendira and other stories).
If you do pick it up, well, half the stories are not actually very interesting, although I think 'Bon Voyage, Mr President', the first story, is not bad.
'The Ghosts of August' is not very successful as a ghost story; in fact it is not scary at all. 'Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane' is a mediocre story about unimportant trivia. Honestly, stories like this are better reserved for Banana Yoshimoto.
'I only come to use the phone' is a tragic and depressing story about how a woman ends up in an asylum, which unfortunately I do not find very interesting.
'Frau Frieda' is simply about a woman who dreams and correctly interprets them, and who dies when a wave crashes her car into a building.
I do not know what other reviewers see in stories such as 'The Saint' (which is about a young lady whose dead body does not decompose and someone tries to get her canonised as a saint) or 'Seventeen poisoned Englishmen' (which is about, well, as the title suggests). I can't even say that they're lost in translation since I think most of the reviewers here read the English version too.
The stories with Maria dos Prazeres, Mrs Forbes and Nena Daconte are curiously interesting enough. The rest are quite forgettable.
In short, this is one book by Garcia Marquez you can skip alongside 'In Evil Hour', unless you are a hardcore Garcia Marquez fan. I strongly recommend 'Innocent Erendira and other stories' as a better short story collection.
Rating:
Summary: Magical
Review: Gabriel Garcia Marquez has mastered the form of the short story. I'm not even finished with the book and I'm in love with it. I read One Hundred Years of Solitude and wanted another taste, but didn't want to commit to another full novel in such quick succession. Now I can't wait to dive into Love in the Time of Cholera. These stories are so unique and filled with the same beautiful magical language as in OYOS. My favorite was "Maria dos Prazeres." The ending was so beautiful it almost made literally gasp. I had to re-read the last page or two a couple of times to savor it.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Review: I have a soft spot for Garcia Marquez, but really, these are unforgettable.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to read, difficult to forget
Review: In twelve short stories, Garcia Marquez proves that he is not only capable of writing deeply, he is capable of writing concisely. The stories in this book are extremely thought provoking, relating to the human spirit and little oddities about people. There is one story in particular that I will not forget. It is about a woman who gets stranded with a flat tire, and hitches a ride with a bus to a mental institution. The story unfolds from there, and I don't think I have ever felt so deeply troubled by a single story like I was in this case. Of the twelve stories, I liked 8 or 9, the others were a little boring (or maybe I did not get them). I highly recommend it, especially for those who do not have the patience to read GM's "One Hundred Years of SOlitude" and would like an intro to the author.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: The stories in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book are so beautiful. He has managed to write stories about things that people go through in life but in a way that no one could describe. I thought that the story "Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane" was wonderful and it seemed so different from most stories. I loved this book and if you like stories that have a little bit of a twist to them read this book.
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