I cannot pick out a single sentence or paragraph to quote from
One Hundred Years of Solitude, the famous novel by Nobel laureate Gabriel GarcĂa MĂĄrquez, because presenting such a small fragment of the text would erase its magic. The storyâs individual episodes, which chronicle the rise and fall of the BuendĂa family in the fictional Colombian town of Macondo, are iconic in their own right. But reviews like mine (and
John Greenâs, which encouraged me to read this book) canât capture its appeal in full. Nevertheless, it is a wonderful and terrible (that is, terror-inspiring) story that wasnât my favorite book but might become yours.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a classic today because its story is gorgeously told. Translator Gregory Rabassa does a great job presenting the original Spanish sentences in clear-but-whimsical English, but MĂĄrquez deserves most of the credit. Every description or phrase is precise and luscious, from riverstones âlike prehistoric eggsâ to wind âfull of voices from the past...murmurs of ancient geraniums, sights of disenchantment that preceded the most tenacious nostalgiaâ (1, 415). Between its covers I encountered the names for a thousand conditions that I had experienced but only now recognized in the narratives of fictional characters.
Some of those characters are pretty neat. Since One Hundred Years of Solitude takes place over a century, individual BuendĂas frequently step into out out of the spotlight, appearing just often enough to perpetuate the family curse in their own unique way. While most female characters conform to the patriarchal attitudes of the 19th- and 20th centuryâFernanda and Petra Cotes in particular embody the worst parts of the virgin-whore dichotomyâĂrsula, the matriarch, is a real badass. Sheâs tenacious. While she isnât a soldier or a scholar like her male relatives, she saves their lives several times with her stubbornness and knowledge of medicine, and without her influence the family fortunes really start to go downhill. The Roma scholar Melquiades and the second-to-last Aureliano are also neat, since their pursuit of knowledge frames the story. But everyone else is a bit of a disaster.
Stories with horrible, ambiguously-framed characters can sometimes be shocking or cathartic, but the rape, pedophilia and incest in this book occur so casually that Iâm not even sure they happened. For example, Remedios Moscote marries Colonel Aureliano BuendĂa a month after getting her first period but âbefore getting over the habits of her childhoodâ (84). Amaranta BuendĂa sexually abuses two of her underage nephews, and one looks back on the experience with longing! Meanwhile, the first encounter of Amaranta Ărsula and Aureliano is an initially-nonconsensual âbattle to the deathâ (396). If all three of these affairs werenât framed as dramatic romances, perhaps they would merely be manifestations of the screwed-up BuendĂa family dynamic. As is, I feel like JosĂ© Arcadio Segundo after a particularly spoiler-y incident: That just happened, didnât it? It was awful, wasnât it? Am I supposed to see the ramifications of abuse in the same way I see the plague of insomnia or the Assumption of Remedios the Beauty, as normal parts of life in Macondo?
Some people enjoy One Hundred Years of Solitudeâs glorious moral ambiguity, and I suspect most of my disdain for it is merely a matter of taste. So is my ambivalence to the novelâs other affairs. Before reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, I had no idea how much of the story was about sex. Itâs the foundation for approximately 90% of the romances and 65% of the plot points, and while some amount of romantic shenanigans is par for the course in a family saga, it feels like every time a character is about to learn something or change history they get distracted by an attractive stranger/villager/relative! Maybe itâs a BuendĂa thing. Itâs just not mine.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a classic novel of magnificent quality. My conflicted reaction to the story isnât ambivalence, but a mixture of great love and mild personal dislike. Like the tangled BuendĂa family tree, the parts I love depend on the parts I donât, and even now I canât split them up.
Graphic: Incest, Pedophilia, Child abuse, Sexual content, and Mass/school shootings
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Violence, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Stalking, Gun violence, and Death of parent
Minor: Abortion, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Homophobia, Trafficking, and Cancer