One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
|
List Price: Our Price: $13.38 You Save: $11.61 (46%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $6.49 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of One Hundred Years of Solitude
Book Review: A Looking Glass Trip Through History
Summary: 4 Stars
This is not your typical novel. It's difficult, confusing, strongly metaphorical, and far more concerned with history and message than any deep look at its characters. At the same time, it is sometimes lyrical, beautiful, inventive, and given to unexpected trips to the magical, just when it seems bogged down in a very harsh reality.
It's the story of the town of Macondo and the family that help found the town, stretched over the hundred years of the title. It's clear, when you step back from the details of this work, that the entire work is a metaphor for what happened to Columbia, from its early run-in with the Spanish invaders through the exploitive actions of companies out to rip the riches from the country with no regard for the human cost of their endeavors, and on into to the modern day world of political corruption backed by barely sheathed threats of force.
The family that the book follows is unique in many ways, peopled by characters both incredibly strong and driven by obsessions, and yet insular, separated from the real world by their own internal fantasies. Here we find the rebel hero and the dominating matron side by side with ghosts, the Wandering Jew, and highly mysterious gypsies. However, all of these characters are seen from a distance, even though we are privy to their internal thoughts and ideas, and it is difficult to get emotionally involved with any of them. Not helping in this regard is the extreme similarity of names through various generations of the family, and frequent references to the genealogical chart at the beginning of the book are necessary to try and keep everything straight.
Stylistically, be prepared for page long sentences and sudden multi-page discourses not immediately connected to current happenings. Often this prose is quite beautiful, and at times very effective in painting pictures of some very horrible occurrences in ways that can sear into your brain. Also be fully prepared for the flights of magical realism, when you go from the mundane of everyday to things clearly impossible in ordinary life, items which often highlight by contrast the depth and trivialness of the ordinary.
If you are looking for a straightforward story with normal people, this is not the place to look. If instead you are looking for something very much out of the ordinary, and willing to work to find the core of what's happening, this work can be quite rewarding. It's doubtful if a single reading of this work will expose all of its potential, there is too much buried meaning, symbolism, and metaphor here that needs careful inspection to yield its full treasure. Its themes are not uplifting; futility, the constant of man's inhumanity to others is stark, the repetitiveness of the actions and character types from one generation to the next leads one down the path of asking what purpose does anything have, and the pervasiveness of each individual's necessary isolation from others keeps a dark cloud over the entire work. This is a somber work, with its gold carefully buried, and the reader must be a diligent prospector.
---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
Book Review: Falls Short of Hype, Still a Beautiful Read
Summary: 4 Stars
This book has been so hyped that it would almost be impossible for it to live up to the high expectations that I had. That being said, I do think it was a wonderfully written and haunting novel.
If this book is read on the surface for an entertaining story, then it definitely drags and is hard to keep the various characters straight. Sometimes the mysticism seemed forced and detracted rather than added to the story. It was also very much like a soap opera with so much drama and cheap plot twists that it was hard to take seriously at times.
Marquez has a very beautiful writing style and often there will be sentences and phrases that jump off the page for their purity and wisdom of human existence. At other times, his writing style made me feel as if I was viewing this saga through a glass window and was never quite able to get into the scenery and characters. This could also be because Marquez would jump between characters as soon as I was getting to know them.
However, now that I have finished the novel and am able to view the story of the Buendia family as a whole it is much more interesting than when I was in the midst of it. Each member of the family was used to personify the various tactics and personalities we employ to live our lives. No matter what anyone did during their lifetime, whether it was attempting to escape or embracing their loneliness, they were reduced to their solitude before death.
There are many interesting parallels and symbols that make the read more interesting for me. Perhaps the people are really symbols for countries and represent the different strategies of countries to be successful, yet no matter what they do they are always a government condemned to the chosen system? Maybe the family is used to represent the entire human race, and the fact that we refuse to acknowledge our inherent flaws has destined us to our own destruction? Whatever the interesting parallels that you draw for yourself from this novel, there are important thoughts about war, humanity, solitude, love, lust, happiness and life woven throughout the pages.
Book Review: dazzling panorama of life & death, love & loss, energy & dissipation
Summary: 5 Stars
I first read this 33 years ago, while in college, and was utterly wowed at the sweep of these stories, all interlinked yet standing on their own. I was studying the classics - and in particular, oral history - so this was doubly fascinating as a streaming narrative of magical realism.
Having re-read it for the first time, I was again astonished at the life and complexity on every page: you laugh, you weep, you hope, and you judge. The details are woven in with the greatest mastery, and stick in the reader's mind long after the book is finished. My favorite image is the ice scene, which became a touchstone in my memory 33 years ago. The story throbs with life you can enter, while remaining unbelievable. It is as good as any mythology and so much of it remains unexplained.
The structure of the narrative is essentially circles within circles: there is a powerful founder (who can pull a horse down by its ears) who founds a city; he is an inspired man and leader, who degenerates yet still controls or sets in motion everything that happens over the next 100 years. The variations in the family are fabulously well portrayed, as they superimpose themselves back on eachother in endless patterns of repetition - skill, intelligence, beauty, political conviction are not enough to break out of the essential pattern. The only thing that will precipitate an end is to reach the end of the largest circle, which is related to the Sanskrit manuscripts written by the greatest friend of the founder, a mysterious gypsy.
What makes the whole thing work is the characters, who are wonderfully succinct and pass through a hundred years as naturally as the cycle of plants. While some readers hate this, I found it utterly charming and exotic, yet chillingly psychologically real. Even with ghosts and miracles.
This is one of the best books I have ever read. The work is so rich and experimental that it is unclassifiable. It made me feel wonder all over again, even in middle age. I would posit that this is a work of genius. Warmly recommended.
Book Review: good, but not spectacular
Summary: 4 Stars
Let me first say: This book, compared to most other 20th-century classics (Joyce, Mann, Proust, Kafka,...), is NOT a difficult read! Its actually easily accessible. What are people reading when they have problems with this one?
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" is the story of a family and a city, and, of course, a tale of the whole human history. In other words, this is a book about everything. This is usually not good, because very many authors cannot handle a very wide focus. But Marquez is a very good writer. There are so many characters and plots in this book that many writers would have problems to organize it without losing focus. Marquez however manages to finish every subplot, to relate it to the other plots, and to keep track of all of his characters.
The book is the strongest if it describes family life and the weaknesses of its characters. Here, the book offers a lot of wisdom. Its much less convincing when it becomes political. I don't like political books in general, and its no different for this one. Being Fidel Castro's best buddy, Marquez cannot resist to bring in some anti-Americanism (I am not American and certainly not biased!) and anti-imperialism (the evil is an american Banana Company, and its arrival is basically the beginning of the end). I find that a little "cheap", and I don't exactly see what it adds to the story.
Everyone interested in serious literature should certainly read this one. Its a very good starting point for those who have not read a lot of literature before, because as I already mentioned, its easily accessible without being shallow.
Book Review: Strangely feels like literary diarrhea
Summary: 2 Stars
It's hard to make up your own mind when you hear so much praise about a book such as this one. It feels wrong to assign negative comments to a work labeled a world classic and whose author received the Nobel Prize.
Indeed, the literary flowers abound inside and the ending is among the best. Marquez is a language virtuoso and imaginative (what else do you want from a writer, eh?) But, I did not enjoy reading this story at all. The narrative is a rather remote 3rd person omniscient, similar to what you would find in a fairy tale, that goes on about various situations happening to many generations of a family. It is not specific about the psychology of characters but looms large, an epic, if you want.
As far as I am concerned - and perhaps I am blasé - I could not care less about these situations or these characters. I felt the scenes were like anecdotes, unimportant and leading nowhere. I had the strange impression the writer had literary diarrhea showing off his prowess with words.
The fact that every once in a while a seemingly gratuitous sex or incest fantasy would happen to these characters who seldom ever love annoyed me. A beautiful love story? Are you kidding? Only the last couple love each others but they are related in blood and end up in a bad place.
There are other epics to read that are more glorious and have more staying power. This one was not to my liking.