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: One hunded years is but an Instant.
Summary: 4 Stars
One Hundred Years of Solitude felt a bit dense at times, and then there where times when you couldn't put the book down, the way G G. Marquez tells the story is just wonderful, he makes time go not in a linear sort of way, but as what felt in a branching kind of style.
Sometimes I needed to stop reading because of work, and when I'd get back to it in some days, it felt really different, and sometimes confusing. till about the 2nd half, this because so many things are going on in the town of Macondo and the names where very similar at times. I believe this is either the most bothersome thing or the most entertaining and helpful thing to the complex story, depending on your memory of the story
I can't recommend reading the book twice or three times a week, I highly RECOMEND reading it, at least a bit every day. When I finished It after about a month or so, I felt that I had missed out on some interesting people, moments, and emotions, not because the book is complicated to fallow, but because one needs to sort of take everything in as one reads, and when you put the book down for a few days and then pick it up, it feels that the story lost the intensity that it had, mainly because the level of retention toward different events that is required if planning to understand the mood of the moment. There so many things one needs to keep in mind as this "Illusion" of time progresses.
I'm planning on reading it again when I get the chance.
(P.S.) - One of my favorite things was the amount of Foreshadowing used, at times it even felt that the writer could be intentionally trying to confuse or deceive, and then one realizes that it was all very essential for the gravity of the story.
Book Review: Too ADD for this book
Summary: 2 Stars
Ok, let me begin by saying this is my first Amazon review. I had to come on here and read some negative reviews of this book to make sure I wasn't totally crazy. After doing so, I feel a bit better, but still feel the need to add this:
Yes, it annoyed me that all the characters have the same name, and unlike other reviewers, this was not something I was willing to either overlook, get used to, or appreciate for it's symbolism, (i.e. that the individual characters aren't supposed to matter, it's the family).
Also, I couldn't stand how a paragraph would run an entire page without breaking, and if you skip a line or two, you miss A LOT. For example, in one paragraph, spanning one page, a character may have a child, but the focus of the section is more on the character's father than the new family member. Or a character may die, and you would entirely miss it. It's like trying to read someone's stream of consciousness and decipher a very intricate plot line from it: infuriating.
Some other negative reviews mentioned issues with the morality of the story, which actually does not bother me in the slightest. I can appreciate a story that bares the ugly insides of the human soul with the best of them. The politics of the story were not a deal-breaker for me, it was the writing style.
This all being said, I am perfectly comfortable with the fact that many (if not most) other people reading this review feel sorry for me for missing the point. I probably did miss the point, but I do feel better knowing that I wasn't the only one. I now feel like can stop torturing myself by forcing myself to read the last couple of chapters.
Book Review: What 1000 nights would like to be.
Summary: 3 Stars
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Ive read this book two times in a space of a year. I can tell that the second time Ive read it, on the original language it was written, Ive liked the story better than the first one.
then i went through the book with the impression that the author never lets the history gets down from the first paragraph to the last, wich I hadnt on the first time I`ve read it. This usualy happens on many great writting at some point. But also with the impression that the charachters are not very personal... perhaps this impersonality, also present on the similarity of names, is a necessary condition of this particular narrative and not a fault of its own.
I think the experience is rewarding the efford of going through this half a thousand pages twice. The first time one reads it, one might get entangled on the multitude of personages with similar names and the spam of time it ranges.
But the author is very crafty and very often makes reference to former and future events relating them, so one never gets lost and always feels on the center of the story.
this also gives the impression of unity that so many minute events would make rather etherogeneus, like the storyes of 1000 nights.
I would like to suggest people to read it two times, and what would help but it is not absolute necessary, have a paper at hand and draw a genealogical line as the personages appears through the narative.
also look for Mario Vargas Llosa's essay on this book. There one can get an account of many levels of interpretation of this tale wich is a fary tale, a cronic, a history study and a romance.
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Book Review: Nothing short of great.
Summary: 5 Stars
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. People will often say about an author "There's nobody like them.." and that's especially true for Garcia Marquez. This isn't a traditional novel, and I can't guarantee you'll love it. Like a lot of great Latin America fiction, it just isn't for some people. 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 novels plot, in so much as it has a plot, is documenting a family, the Buendia's, over a period of one hundred years. 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.
I would also recommend getting the Everyman's library version of this book. It is well bound, beautiful and will hold together. 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. As one review put it, it leaves you with a pleasant exhaustion that only very great novels provide. There are very few books I've enjoyed as much as this one, and I recommend you at least give it a shot. Even if you put it down for a while, I'm willing to bet you will be drawn back to it before long. 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.
Book Review: Themes and concepts
Summary: 4 Stars
I felt this book captured the decay of memories and the human mind with immense efficiency and accuracy. The story of the Buendia family that lasts for 7 generations or so portrays death, wealth, happiness in some regard; however always followed by some disaster, and lastly loss of face and time. One main concept remains the common theme that money does not buy happiness. For example Aureliano Segundo's wealth is extensive, yet he does not find happiness in his wealth or with Fernanda, but rather with his concubine.
I really like the magical aspect of this book in the beginning. Magic allowed my imagination to theorize inventions, possibly irrational ones, just as Jose Acardio Buendia the founder of Macondo imagined bizarre concepts. For me the book lacked substantial plot in the middle once Colonel Aureliano came back and awaited natural death in his silver fish work room and after the tragedy of his sons, yet pick up again once the "conservative" and oppressive Mr. Brown and his banana industry.
The underlying concept I believe to be most important is that the past defines you. It never leaves you, just as Prudencio Aguliar(sp?) followed Jose Acardio Buendia even after he died. The past usually haunted each character; emphasizing and erupting a flame of solitude to encompass each of them forever. Whether their solitude remained their inability to love, or the physical decrepitude over time, or even the family values they were brought up on. However portrayed, peaceful or haunting, solitude as a result of the past defined the characters and the book.