One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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Book Reviews of One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.)
Book Review: Marquez at its best!
Summary: 5 Stars
For those of you who have read Marquez before this book will not dissapoint you, in fact I think its one of Marquez best.
For those of you who havent, this is a great way to start.
This is the story of the Buendia family and how things happen through the years. It is full of memorable passages that will make you think that what happens to the family and the town can be related to different passages in world history.
Dont worry if after the first couple of pages you are confused by the many names and vatriations of each. The characters and their story are so unique that the similarity in names will have little importance.
I think Marquez tells a good and enjoyable story that can be enjoyed by everyone at anytime and you will find that after the first few pages it will be hard to put it down.
Granted that I read this book in Spanish so I think it might feel a little different reading it in English and maybe some events will seem strange if you are not familiarized with the way families behave in Latin countries.
Totally worth it though.
Book Review: A Work You Come Back To, Ever and Always
Summary: 5 Stars
What is it about a certain work of fiction that keeps us coming back to it, time and again, as if we're all ancient travellers on the same road of life? ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE is such a work; whenever I travel I take the book with me, dip into its pages, as if I'm skinny-dipping into familiar waters, revisit its characters and scenes, savor its language and wild flights of imagination. Gertrude Stein once said, "If a book is really true, you'll always need it again." How could a work of fiction be this true, this powerful, this overwhelming in its understanding of the human condition? Damned if I know. And I write fiction all the time, with everything I've got, every muscle and bone in my body. Maybe it's got something to do with "magic realism," with the way you tell a story, not conventionally in a straightforward narrative fashion, but rather, in a series of concentric circles, hovering around the characters, around the events of Macondo and the multigenerational families that occupy the landscape, that live it, breathe it, and make you, the reader, part of it.Book Review: Magical Realism at its Finest
Summary: 5 Stars
One Hundred Years of Solitude is the novel we compare all attempts at Latin American magical realism to. In this book Marquez perfectly executes the requirements of the genre, making sure that the more unrealistic elements are used purposefully, not just to shock or confuse (although I do understand some readers' initial disgust with several incestuous encounters and with the scene in which red ants are carrying away an infant). Nothing is done randomly is this novel, the characters, events, stories and dialogue tie together to prove the strength of the Buendia family bond.
Just about everyone should be able to find thematic elements to interest them in this dense, lengthy novel. Violence and war, success and defeat, love and loss, friends and enemies, loyalty and betrayal, tradition and innovation and, above all else, the role of the family. Marquez's style allows for humor to coincide with very serious, grave emotions and events.
A novel everyone who considers themselves "a reader" should read.
Book Review: History Repeats Itself
Summary: 5 Stars
The first thing I thought of while reading the book was how much is reminded me of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Obviously Solitude was written first. What I loved so much in Middlesex (family history, foreign country), I grew to enjoy in this book.
What I think is crazy about the book is that the most frustrating parts of it the author included on purpose! For Example, everybody has the same name regardless of what generation they are from. The frustration of separating the characters was done on purpose to show much of the family's history and experieneces repeated.
Another frustrating thing about the book was that it would skip around chonologically. This took a bit getting used to but became another example of the repeating of history.
I was equally impressed to meet someone over the weekend that had read the book in spanish. I was VERY impressed. This book was great but at times I felt it a bit dificult. I needed a dictionary next to me while I was reading :)
Book Review: Beauty manifested as letters
Summary: 5 Stars
If you want an example of how to touch the human heart with words on a page, look no further than the work of the incredible Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. You could open this book to a page in which the making of a ham sandwhich is being described, but if it is being described by Garcia-Marquez...you may find yourself in tears...this is not an exaggeration. The plot is completely original, the characterization is some of the best with certain characters such as Colonel Aureliano Buendia and Remedios the Beauty, and if there was ever a book that provided an escape to another world...this is it. After putting it down, you may look at your surroundings and find everything to be painfully dull. Gabo is a master.