There’s not much I can say about this book that hasn’t been said 1.000 times before, so just some quick thoughts for posterity:
I went into One Hundred Years of Solitude with some fear, because it has happened that my re-reads turn teen favorites into just-oks. This one however, was still as amazing, as captivating and as fierce as I remembered. It’s that type of book that’s experimental and “intellectual” and yet emotionally engaging. Like a Michelin-star meal that really make you feel full.
The plot is simply summed up as the story of a family in a remote village in an unnamed South American country, but then each character is a world in itself, and the language… oh the language!
Márquez’s style is very much in the oral tradition, as if he just captured what he’d heard from someone old, wise and incredibly funny. That’s why the magic realism feels so real, why every relationship and emotion are described with such power and why the way he moves from one character to the other flows so well. The book may have the most depressing title ever and it does deal a lot with loneliness, but in fact it’s a really bright, energetic, colorful story, that feels always in motion. Hard to explain, you have to read it!
One of the biggest complains I’ve read about One Hundred Years is that the characters’ names are all the same (e.g. father José Arcadio Buendía, son Aureliano, grandson José Arcadio) and it confuses everything. Well, that might be true (as of the 4th generation I had to draw a family tree), but for me it’s a demonstration of Márquez sense of humor.
Also, surely Úrsula Buendía should belong to all the lists of “Best heroines of all time”.
I’ve read it in Portuguese but I’m aiming to pick up the original next time. I wonder how it reads in English and can see how part of the language’s richness is lost. I was debating with myself whether the “solitude” in the English title shouldn’t be “loneliness” instead. “Solitude” is almost a voluntary isolation, and the Spanish “soledad” doesn’t read like that.
Have you read this one? Any thoughts?
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Other thoughts: A Striped Armchair, Jules’ Book Review, Confessions of a Bibliophile, Man of La Book, Other Sashas, of blog, Shelf Love, Fifty Book Project, The Labyrinth Library, Avid Readers’ Musings, bookhimdanno, Passion for the Page, My Library in the Making, Rivers I have Known, Old English Rose Reads, The Reading Life (thoughts?)
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October 6, 2015 at 11:56 pm
Jay
I read this for the first time about five years ago. I had already read and enjoyed Love in the Time of Cholera, which you may know is certainly a more linear story, but I liked this one too, even if it was confusing with all the same-named characters. I still have an image in my mind of the ship in the jungle that comes up a couple times in the book, and I enjoyed the old man character whose name I can’t recall at the moment, (starts with a “Z” maybe?)
Anyway I loved the language too (something about trying to get the one aunt to “lower her drawbridge” strings to mind) although I read it in an English translation. (I do have a Spanish edition to, but my Espanol eyes not so good. Since I read it I have also acquired a Columbian friend in my office, who. I sometimes discuss literature with. (He always recommends South American writers strangely enough).
October 7, 2015 at 8:57 pm
Jenny @ Reading the End
I did read this, many years ago, and absolutely hated it. But I’m sure it’s a failing of me as a reader, not something the book failed at. Magical realism and books in translation are two things I struggle with, and this was both. Doomed to failure.
October 11, 2015 at 10:07 pm
Athira
I have not read this one, but my cousin recommended this to me by saying that this book was worth reading just for the climax. That got me very interested in it but I need to follow up on that interest.
October 12, 2015 at 4:57 pm
Kristen M.
I read quite a few of Gabo’s books right after I finished college (almost 20 years ago!) and so, like you, I’m worried that they won’t be the same on reread. I’m determined to try though in the next year or so.
October 13, 2015 at 4:10 am
aartichapati
I read this one in high school and I remember much more of it than I would expect. A lot about the impact of modernization on a rural town. I also remember Ursula and LOVING her!
Now I’m sad that the English version I read perhaps was lacking some of the richness of the original. Sigh.
October 25, 2015 at 4:43 pm
Bellezza
That’s so true! “My rereads turn teen favorites into just oks”. I’ve found the exact same thing.
Have never read this one, nor Love in The Time of Cholera which I’ve started about five times. Some day…
November 17, 2015 at 10:20 pm
Amy
That happens to me all the time. I remember loving something; I re-read it; I’m disappointed. I have read this one but so many years ago I don’t remember it at all. Needs a re-read 😉
January 2, 2016 at 6:46 pm
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[…] One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez Still a beautiful book and once again, 15 years after, I’m awed by Márquez’s genius. […]