Chronicle of a Death Foretold
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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Book Summary Information
Author: Gabriel Garcia MarquezEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-10-07
ISBN: 140003471X
Number of pages: 128
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Book Review: Creative, Brilliant Novella - Absolutely Fascinating, Even After Repeated Readings Through the Years
Summary: 5 Stars
Chronicle of a Death Foretold was published in 1981, the year before Gabriel Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The story begins with sentence: "On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat that the bishop was coming on." We readers know from the beginning that Nasar will die today. Each of the five chapters recount the events leading up to the murder, providing different perspectives and contradictory statements; there was not even agreement on whether it rained, and if so, how much.
Angelo Vicario is discovered not to be a virgin on her wedding night. Under pressure she reveals that Santiago Nasar had been her lover, and her two brothers reluctantly carryout Nasar's murder to recover the family honor. The narrator doubts whether Nasar was Angelo Vicario's actual lover. We never learn for certain.
Pablo and Pedro Vicario make no secret of their plan, and appear (at least from some accounts) to be almost waiting for someone to intervene, but no one steps forth. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is an example of magical realism that is also characteristic of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's highly respected novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. The inexorable unfolding of events, implausible given the widespread knowledge of the planned murder, resists natural explanations.
The partially contradictory, incomplete accounts did leave me with unanswered questions, and yet the denouement (at the beginning, rather than the end?) is not unsatisfying. There continues to be enough puzzlement on my part, however, that I find myself every few years returning to Chronicle of a Death Foretold. This brilliant, deliciously ambiguous novella can probably be best compared with Faulkner's remarkable The Sound and the Fury, or Joseph Kafka's disturbing short story, The Trial.
Summary of Chronicle of a Death Foretold
A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place 27 years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister.Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to stop it? The more that is learned, the less is understood, and as the story races to its inexplicable conclusion, an entire society--not just a pair of murderers-is put on trial.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel Books
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