Reviews

First off, the plot is confusing, particularly because every name in the book is reused at least once, and in one particular case over twenty times. I don't normally get hung up too much on plot, but in some cases I had to flip back to the family tree pictured before the first chapter to make sense of something I was reading. That's okay; I didn't mind.

Because the story basically played second fiddle to the descriptions that Márquez used, I could get away with not understanding some points of the plot and still enjoyed the book.

One thing I keep asking myself: why is this book considered a classic as well as one of the best pieces from a Nobel Prize winning author? Maybe he was the first to use such impressionistic/expressionistic description that came to be known as magical realism. I'd like to know what the real critics think. I'd have trouble explaining the greatness of this book, partially because I'm not convinced of it myself.

I need, however, no convincing of the fact that this is a very good book, and very much worth reading.

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3.0

Rating: 2.5/3

“Tell him that a person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.”

This book is a phenomenal concept in theory yet it absolutely does not work for me.

100 Years of Solitude follows the Buendía family through six generations. It also traces the development and events of their town, Macondo from what could be said to be its founding to very much modern times.

This book was a lot and upon finishing it I felt like I had run a marathon. I need to say that the story itself could have been amazing if it would have only been given more space to develop.

It took me very long to figure out why this story wasn't gripping me because on the surface it has everything that could potentially make a good story with interesting characters. But to me, this story seriously lacked any sort of reaction scenes. Like in a film, when something truly traumatic happens, it feels weird when no one even seems to blink an eye or say anything? That is how this entire book felt. The reactions are along the lines of: and then she went into her room and wept for three months. And the character maybe disappears for that time from the story. This got to the point that I started forgetting that certain character even existed and there was something ironic about the scene where one member of the family literally mentions that they thought someone else had died and that they had forgotten about them. I guess the author was aware of it all.

Which brings me to my next point. Pacing and the sheer amount of events that are covered in this book. This books takes us through the lives of an entire family, not one character, a family and as my friend put it, you blink once and ten years have passed. Maybe if these were the records of a family this could work but not in a novel like this. There was simply no time to get acquainted with most character apart from the main ones and even with them I wished I would have gotten more insights into their minds. For example, one character is mentioned as always having been very insecure about 30% into the novel when he was first introduced at the very start and while I did remember something earlier on that might have illustrated that a bit, it was very much glossed over, given very little detail and was therefore very easy to forget.

Moving on to the characters. Apart from the rather mundane side characters, the protagonists of our main family were all really interesting people with their own motivations, actions, arcs and fates. I think there was so much potential here but as mentioned before there was so little time spent diving into their thoughts. The characters were there, I just wanted more so that I wouldn't have to scan every line for details on who they are. Half of them have basically the same name and its confusing to say the very least. However, as soon as I started realising that not only their names but also their characters are similar I started to realise that this is a commentary on how history repeats itself and how difficult it is to escape from the situation you are born in. Sadly, the book does throw that into your face eventually, it is literally written into the text that they are repeating the same fate over and over again, which I thought was a bit unnecessary, considering the fact that most other commentary, metaphors and the like remain rather subtle. As soon as I stopped regarding them all as individual characters the book became a lot easier to read.

One thing that eventually really bothered me was how casual violence, of all sorts, was portrayed. I do understand that a lot of it is a commentary on colonialism but not just war and invasion is portrayed this way but also abuse within families. Oh and don’t get me started on the weird sexual themes. I am in no way saying that none of this should be portrayed in books but I do draw the line at the second case of incest, I don’t think that is too much to ask.
There were parts of the story that really gripped me but I had to stop myself from skipping paragraphs frequently because I just could not get myself to be interested. Overall, the book is an interesting read, a good piece for discussion but really not something I would recommend for the average reader, who mainly reads for fun.

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