One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.
Amazon.com Review: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Buendía, stands before the firing squad. In between, he recounts such wonders as an entire town struck with insomnia, a woman who ascends to heaven while hanging laundry, and a suicide that defies the laws of physics:
A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread. "Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.
The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house."
With One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez introduced Latin American literature to a world-wide readership. Translated into more than two dozen languages, his brilliant novel of love and loss in Macondo stands at the apex of 20th-century literature. --Alix Wilber
Takers and Leavers a Continuum Marquez transfers you through the words and thoughts of the Buendia family of the development of a primal foraging community to a community self involved in taking and developing a new world order with man at the center.
Everyman's Library Marrquez Everyman's Library edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude is a masterpiece of book publishing. Great binding, ribbon marker, typography and paper. A pleasure to hold and read.
Cruel and with no redemptive value This is a hard book to read. It is equally despising and depressing, and somewhat boring in its literalness of the biblical-style apocalyptic approach to the whole fiasco that is the comedy of Latin America. But at its surface (and the novel is entirely a surface phenomenon because of its literalness) there are levels of cruelty unimagined by any other writer, and maybe for this the novel deserves its distinction. Jose Arcadio Buendia, a former god-believing man hoping to acquire science (because he doesn't want to "live like donkeys") then losing his faith (because the "daguerreotype proves god's inexistence") declares after extensive investigation that the earth is round ("like an orange") and ends with him going crazy (in the deadest of dead languages, Latin). Garcia-Marquez saves the worst cruelty for the son, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who hopes for military glory and meaning to his life, but who instead is thrown back into the dark pit of memory and regret, dragging around military failure and indecision like a paralyzed limb, despising everything, women, ideals, etc. And introducing vultures at his death just seemed to underscore the literalness and cruelty of the text as a whole. Every other Buendia after them is parodic of the modern man or woman. Choose the degeneracy, and Marquez embodies it in a later Buendia: the libertine, the glutton, the free spirit, philanderer, the rake, the reprobrate, isolationist. All of these are present to some extent in Jose Arcadio Buendia or Colonel Aureliano Buendia, but they are not definitive of and do not circumscribe their personalities as they do in the later Buendias. And of these later Buendias Marquez depicts their downfall like roaches being stamped out, in the blackest of black humor, which is why readers complain about the unheroic qualities, the hollowness and boredom of succeeding generations, which is the whole point. Marquez detests his world (not in the beginning which is idyllic, but its later manifestations) and weaves his story with the cruelty this form of detestation takes: Locked in fatalistic moments as inescapable as Homer's, whether living tediously (usually the women) or dying early (usually the men) for they-don't-know-what. The Buendia men utter stupid things before being executed and wholly misunderstand their existence. And there are no gods to lighten things up, like in the Iliad. War is farcical (Ursula reminds them that although they are soldiers, their "mothers reserve the right to take down their pants and spank them"). Loyalty is literally a laughing matter (the illegal painting of ballot cards being the spur for Aureliano to choose political sides, because one side is "trickier than the other"). There isn't even a redemptive figure, like in the Bible. There is a level of literalness here which is juvenile (e.g. names as determinants of behavior), almost naïve for a modern novel, until you realize the meticulous stage-setting for destruction taking place. The novel doesn't suffer from too much fantasy, it's mired in too much depressive reality. The fantasy only leavens it a bit, but this doesn't distract from the cruelty being perpetrated. Sex is of course freely enjoyed (and that taboo, incestual sex) but this sensual mirage is only a distraction, for the characters and the reader, from what's happening right before their eyes. The book has no political, philosophical, or sociological agenda, moral or immoral. The only point, foretold in the beginning and coming at the end, is eventual extinction, which is hardly a point. Although it is better than the Bible and the Iliad, by being crueler, the reader should beware: this novel is like a Toltec or Aztec statue, one with snakes for heads and hearts and severed hands for necklaces, unimpressive at first sight until you do a complete 360 survey of it and realize it fits right into the cruel landscape their sculptors inhabited. And there is no way out. Everything is there on the surface. There is no redemptive value in this kind of fiction. It doesn't extend outside itself. Multiple readings do not yield multiple levels of meaning. It means everything it says.
I loved the Novel, but not the "book" (edition) Thumbs up to Gabriel Garcia Marquez' fantastical epic novel, "100 years of Solitude"! It is the story of Macondo, a fictional South American town founded by the bold patriarch of the Buendia clan, Jose Arcadio Buendia. Twenty households of folks subsist in peace and relative isolation, minding their own business, until hosts of visitors and newcomers, bringing new ideas--scientific, political, and economic--descend upon the sleepy village. These developments, along with the growth and development of the Buendia's through generations, lead to unexpected and often bizarre and tragic results.
Marquez' imagination seems to know no bounds, as he recounts story after incredible story in ridiculous detail, which are bound together with certain common recurring themes. The style of the novel, "magical realism", means that the most freakish stories are told in the same matter-of-fact tone as the most prosaic ones. Marquez grew up in the home of his grandparents, natural story tellers, who related countless such tall-tales in such a way, blurring the boundaries of reality and unreality. My favorite of these tall tales is the part, toward the end of the book where it rains for "four years, eleven months, and two days". What they went through during that time was hilarious and outlandish!
Another big theme is the recurring personalities of the male Buendias across five generations. The author does a good job of creating real and interesting characters, but I particularly enjoyed some of the female ones, as they were each quite different and extraordinary. Ursala, the matriarch, is a central central figure who lives over a hundred years, during which she works endlessly to care for the family throughout the generations. Fernanda, the wife whom Aureliano Segundo takes from a ruined aristocratic family in "the Highlands", never really fits in. The best Fernanda scene is during the rainy season, when she drones on complaining at Aureliano for an incredible three pages with just one sentence!
One of the many themes in the book that interest me is the strong sense of irony which pervades the novel on many levels. The overriding irony which also underlies the whole story is circular nature of time--the recurring personality types and their dysfunctional actions which they seem doomed to repeat. This is an irony of tragic futility. At times it seems tedious, but the author uses it to brilliant effect, and particularly at the end, where the story colmanates with one surprising final ironic twist.
These are just a few ideas and reflections of mine from this monumental work. Lastly, I suggest that you buy one of the other editions of the book, because this one is rather flimsy and cheaply made. The Oprah book club edition (which I have not seen) can be had for $7.00, including shipping, and the hardback for $11.12, if you click on the words "32 new". I hope this helps. Enjoy!
good but over-rated Yes, this is a good book and I had no trouble following it. I've read quite a few books in this genre. It is pleasant escapism, nothing more and nothing less. I think all "magical realism" is. It takes you into a completely different world for a while. But calling it "required reading for the human race" and a "literary masterpiece" is going a bit too far. It hardly ranks with the likes of Shakespeare. It is interesting reading if you enjoy this type of literature, so I recommend it.
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