Reviews tagging 'Religious bigotry'

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

10 reviews

bayrayj's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book was insane, literally. There are moments where it drove me crazy reading the characters with all the same names make the same mistakes over and over again! But it was also nostalgic and sweet and reassuring and everything you want a family narrative to be. There were some issues with how the book discussed race and sexuality, some words and events have not aged well. This being said it was an interesting and complex story that is hard to put into words. I have never read something so meandering but at the same time so driven and focused, I fell in love with the Buendias and their many lives. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Incest, and War

Moderate: Religious bigotry and Sexual content

Minor: Pedophilia

kjf524's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Rape, War, Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Blood, Child death, Colonisation, Death, Death of parent, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Incest, Infidelity, Mental illness, Murder, Pandemic/Epidemic, Pedophilia, Police brutality, Pregnancy, Religious bigotry, Sexual violence, and Violence

miayukino's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Confinement, Adult/minor relationship, War, Sexual content, Child death, Body horror, Animal cruelty, Suicide, Murder, Mass/school shootings, Gore, Death of parent, Animal death, Grief, Incest, Infidelity, Violence, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Vomit, Blood, Religious bigotry, Racism, Colonisation, Fatphobia, Sexism, and Excrement

heddasch's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Colonisation, Death of parent, Incest, Adult/minor relationship, Religious bigotry, Blood, Death, Violence, Racial slurs, Rape, Toxic relationship, and War

Moderate: Grief

isarza's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Siempre disfruto mucho dem realismo mágico. 
Intenté leer este libro hace muchos años y me exasperó el hecho de que todos se llamaban igual. Esta segunda vez disfruté mucho de la primera parte del libro y pude entender que sus destinos estaban sellados por los nombres, estaban condenados a repetirse.
Me gustó mucho cómo se manejó el tiempo como algo cíclico a pesar de que generalmente odio ese tipo de historias porque creo que forzar a los personajes a terminar en el mismo lugar en el que empezaron estanca su crecimiento y es un retroceso en la mayoría de los casos.
Sin embargo creo que es un libro DEMASIADO largo. La primera parte es muy entretenida pero los personajes de la segunda mitad no son tan interesantes como los de la primera. 
Fernanda es insufrible y sus hijos también, la historia decayó a partir de que ella llegó.

Spoiler

Además de que todo el incesto y la pedofilia me parecieron sumamente desagradables. Esa fue la razón de que no pudiera llegar ni a la mitad del libro la primera vez y saber que es el tema más recurrente en el libro. García Marquez te lo quiere poner como que es el amor y que el último Aureliano terminó con todo porque sí fue concebido con amor pero fue resultado de una relación incestuosa. Es el segundo libro de García Marquez que leo que tiene esos temas y hace que me de miedo leer más de él porque qué perro asco. Espero que se lo hayan comido las hormigas también a él por viejo cochino

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Incest, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Racism, Adult/minor relationship, Miscarriage, Animal death, Religious bigotry, Dementia, and Mental illness

mhairicorinne's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Incest, War, Sexual content, Murder, Adult/minor relationship, Mass/school shootings, Infidelity, Gun violence, and Child abuse

Moderate: Blood and Sexual assault

Minor: Child death, Religious bigotry, and Pregnancy

sploack's review against another edition

challenging mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

What the hell did I just read? Not only does this book not have any plot whatsoever, but it also seamlessly normalizes sexism, violence, cheating, incest, animal abuse, child abuse and pedophilia. And is there even a single likeable character in the whole story? In my opinion they’re all shamelessly terrible people. 

Its only merit is that it is well written, but that can’t save it from me giving it 1 star.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Incest, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Violence, War, Adult/minor relationship, Eating disorder, Religious bigotry, Rape, Child death, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Sexism, Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, and Mass/school shootings

bluejayreads's review against another edition

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

I mainly picked this up because I put it on hold at the library during a (very brief) classics-reading kick earlier this year and promptly forgot about it. When it came available, I figured I might as well read it. 

This story chronicles six-ish generations of the Buendía family and the small town of Macondo. Family heads José Arcadio and Úrsula, along with a group of unrelated other people, take a long trek into the jungle and build a town. Their family grows, their children have children of their own, and the Buendía family gets bigger – in number, in wealth, in stature in the town. Times change, war happens, the town becomes less isolated, new scientific inventions happen, the family begins to disperse away from the town. The town of Macondo rises, and then falls, with the Buendía family. 

This is a weird book, but from my limited experience with magical realism, this is weird in ways consistent with the genre. It’s like the real world, but a little to the left. Alchemy is a thing that works, there’s a side character who may be immortal or may be already dead, one character gets medical treatment from psychic doctors who are thousands of miles away, a character gets taken up into heaven, and nobody views this as at all out of the ordinary. In fact, magnifying glasses and turning metal into gold are treated with equal seriousness and excitement, like the ability to put the right ingredients into a pot and turn them into gold is a neat scientific advancement like curving glass to make things bigger. 

The thing that surprised me the most about this book is that for all its century-spanning scale and magical realism bizarreness, it’s remarkably human. None of these characters are great people, but they’re all doing their best in their circumstances. I found something relatable in every character – in Úrsula’s resourcefulness in keeping the family functional; in José Arcadio’s desire to learn all about cool new things; in Fernanda’s rigid adherence to rules; in Amaranta Úrsula’s desire to leave the small town where she grew up and grow in the wider world; in Remedios the Beauty’s … well, let’s be honest, Remedios the Beauty was who I wish I could be. There are six generations of Buendías, each of whom love and lose, grow and die, succeed, fail, make mistakes, and ultimately just are in all their messy glory. It sounds pretentious to say this book is about the human condition, but it kind of is. 

My biggest struggle was keeping the characters straight. Normally I would blame this on the audiobook format, and it is what caused my difficulty remembering Arcadio and Aureliano were two different characters. But the book itself doesn’t make it easy on me, either. This family reuses names a lot – there are three José Arcadios (and one just Arcadio), three Remedioses, and twenty-two Aurelianos (although to be fair, only four of them actually have major roles). There are also 32 biological relatives and 8 spouses stretching across the century this book covers, not to mention characters who aren’t part of the Buendía family. At some point, I felt like I needed to give them numbers to tell them apart. 

I didn’t think I was much for the “sweeping family saga” type of book, but if they’re anything like this, I may have to reconsider. I didn’t get particularly attached to any one character (unless you count Remedios the Beauty, who I mainly loved because she’s #goals), but I enjoyed seeing the high-level view of the rise and fall, fortunes and misfortunes of the Buendías. One Hundred Years of Solitude is, much to my surprise, an enjoyable and remarkably relatable book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Death of parent, and Mental illness

Moderate: Rape, Infidelity, Incest, Body horror, Religious bigotry, War, Murder, and Sexual content

Minor: Adult/minor relationship

ran_sophia's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The book reads me well and I was able to orient in the story, which surprised me quite a bit.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Incest, Animal cruelty, Bullying, Misogyny, Toxic relationship, Sexual assault, Rape, Forced institutionalization, and Medical content

Moderate: Colonisation, Sexism, Miscarriage, War, Self harm, and Death

Minor: Homophobia, Police brutality, Religious bigotry, and Child death

elizlizabeth's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is the story of entire generations of a family, up to the moment they settle in a new land and 'til the bloodline's demise. The Buendía family is definitely something, but I wouldn't say they're a role model (nor does the author portray them as such). Misfortune after misfortune happens to them and it can feel quite fatalist at times, a sort of Colombian Lemony Snicket, but with more incest. There's a lot of characters and the fact that they're named the same had me checking the Family Tree every five pages and even then I'm sure I attributed a plot point to the wrong Aureliano -which I guess is a clever way to force you to immerse in the story and be as lost as all the other Buendías.
In the end that's what this is, a clever book, marvelously crafted with exquisite prose, but deeply disturbing and depressing. I do not agree with GGM's worldview here and the whole Oedipus Complex trope seemed to point at Shakespearean levels of tragedy, but where my man Willy didn't take himself too seriously, GGM does this sad boi act which made me dislike his books in the first place. Appreciate the art, but won't be re-reading it soon, nor recommending it to nobody.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Genocide, Gun violence, Incest, Miscarriage, Pedophilia, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Ableism, Body horror, Death, Death of parent, Dementia, Police brutality, Torture, and Trafficking

Minor: Confinement, Misogyny, and Religious bigotry