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This isn't a traditional novel, and I can't guarantee you'll love it. It is well bound, beautiful and will hold together. The novel opens with one of literature's greatest leads "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad." and never lets up through the four hundred some odd pages that follow. The novels plot, in so much as it has a plot, is documenting a family, the Buendia's, over a period of one hundred years. Even if you put it down for a while, I'm willing to bet you will be drawn back to it before long. Like a lot of great Latin America fiction, it just isn't for some people. I would also recommend getting the Everyman's library version of this book.
As one review put it, it leaves you with a pleasant exhaustion that only very great novels provide. People will often say about an author "There's nobody like them." and that's especially true for Garcia Marquez. And I don't know if other versions have this or not, but it has a Buendia family tree at the beginning, which is helpful for telling apart characters, as their names are often nearly identical. However, if you love Latin American writers and for some reason haven't read Marquz's masterpiece, I recommend you do so as soon as possible. The family is imperfect and dysfunctional to say the least, but are also very powerfully described, and by the end you will know them so well you'll feel as if you know them personally. There are very few books I've enjoyed as much as this one, and I recommend you at least give it a shot. It's interesting and well written, with all of the magic you'd expect from a Latin American great, and it's definitely worth a read.
It's almost all exposition, with little dialogue. Not sure why this book has been so raved about. The characters may be "memorable", but only because they're "boring". When I bought it, the book store clerk told me it was his "favorite book ever". That's quite an endorsement.I found it to be really uninteresting. None of them have any personality (although one is well-endowed, which is nice) and is the author just *trying* to be difficult when he gives them all such similar names.This book felt like the authors parents told him lots of stories and fables when he was growing up, and he tried to cram them all into one long stream on consciousness tale. I abandoned it half-way through.
Gabriel Garcia Marques is a giant among world and South American Writers. This book is an eye opener for those interested in South American lore and Magical Realism. A true masterpiece. Could not put it down.
This work can only be the product of a mind in an extremely imaginative state. I don't know how it comes across in Spanish, but I would certainly give credit to Gregory Rabassa for the captivating presentation. From then on he was never sure who was who".
In between you will find numerous Aurelianos and Arcadios all of which can get pretty confusing; to keep track of them all, fortunately, the book has the Buendia family tree printed at the beginning. Each moment in Macondo is as good as the next and the beginning is as good as the end and the end is as good as the beginning of the end and the beginning. Gabriel Marquez blends the real and the surreal to weave a fantastic tale around the town of Macondo and the Buendia family starting with Jose Arcadio Buendia, the patriarch characterized by his entrepreneurial zeal and scientific spirit who, among other explorations, attempts to use a daguerreotype to disprove the existence of God and all the way to Aureliano who is finally seen deciphering parchments.
The beautiful aspect of this story is that you are invited to passively sit and watch the events unfold (over a century) in Macondo, a town where, as explained by a poker-faced Gabriel Garcia, flying carpets, yellow butterflies, ascension to heaven are as mundane as the rest. Actually, unless you are very good with names and names that you don't hear often, you may want to write down the additional characters in there. Heck, even the teacher Melchor Escalona had the same problem ".used to knowing Jose Arcadio Segundo by his green shirt, went out of his mind when he discovered that the latter was wearing Aureliano Segundo's bracelet and that the other one said, nevertheless, that his name was Aureliano Segundo in spite of the fact that he was wearing the white shirt and the bracelet with Jose Arcadio Segundo's name.
You are not going to ask "what is next." since, the way it is told, the beauty of the story lies in the 'here and now'. Looking forward to reading it again.
as i began reading this, i was surprised by the writing style. Garcia Marquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound, meaningful, and meaningless in life." ~William Kennedy, New York Timesi don't think it could be put any better.covering every facet of both the complexity and simplicity of love and solitude, i found myself reading and re-reading certain parts, finding the weight of the words in my own context. it is in fact a story of recollection, one that unfolds magically through the words of marquez in the city of macondo and the buendia family.
it looks daunting then, when you open up the book to any page and you see full paragraphs, as if it were one massive essay. i had a difficult time finding my way into the story, but now that i'm done, i'm so glad i read it. it is written in heavy prose, with very little dialogue.
the writing is mystical and poetic, with some of the most beautiful language, particularly in the last 30 pages or so. i suppose it makes sense, considering that roughly one hundred years is being covered in less than 500 pages. its as if everything is written as a story being told.
one of the quotes on the back of the book stuck with me throughout the reading: "Mr. it was perfect.
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