I was once told (apologies for the passive voice, but I cannot remember who told me) that One Hundred Years of Solitude was so difficult to read that it might as well be regarded as unreadable.

Wrong. Dead wrong.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is not merely readable, it’s…eminently readable. It’s clear, it’s marvelous, it’s entrancing. It’s, well, easy to read.

More than anything Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magnum opus reminded me of the family sagas by Michener or Rutherford. Really, the idea is the same. The story follows a fictional family from generation to generation in order to show a region’s history.

The difference is this: Michener and Rutherford do everything in their power to make their creations seem real. They are precise concerning time and place. Their characters interact with real historical figures; their fictional locations are caught up in real historical events.

Marquez doesn’t bother with any of that. His Macando makes no pretense to reality. It’s a place beset by insomnia plagues and deluges, a place where travelling gypsies hawk their wares and destiny has a very tangible effect on the world. It’s a place built on legend, not reality.

And it’s all the more true for that. ( )

GGM isn't for everyone or anytime. I've been fortunate to read him at times when I've been able to savour the richness, the weird liquidness of his prose. Cien Años delighted me again. It took me a month, and it may take me longer next time, but that's the thing: there will be a next time. This isn't a book you're done with; it's a story you sort of relish. ( )

"...and her soul brightened with the nostalgia of hr lost dreams." (p.392)

Garcia Marquez can bring words to life - e.g. talking about Melquiades: "...although in the last days he lost his appetite and fed only on vegetables. He soon acquired the forlorn look that one sees in vegetarians." That sentence made me laugh, do I look forlorn?

Realizing at the end that Melquiades was the chronicler of the family - and the one who ties the first to the last. Excellent read, one that probably needs a reread (or three) to appreciate fully

This was the first "ficciones" that I read. It made me fall in love with South American literature, a reality so different than our own. ( )

Das schöne Leben in der Provinz: Das ist wirklich ein Klassiker. Nicht etwa, weil das Buch alt ist oder besonders berühmt. Der Autor hat danach noch viele erfolgreiche Bücher veröffentlicht, und so ist dieses Werk zu unrecht etwas in den Hintergrund geraten. Es ist ein Klassiker, weil es eine Unmenge an klassischen Geschichten enthält, einen Fundus, aus dem man sich immer wieder bedienen kann, und der als Vorlage für vielleicht ein Dutzend Romane problemlos reichen könnte.

Erzählt wird das Schicksal eines Dorfes, und damit auch einer großen Famillie, irgendwo im Nirgendwo Lateinamerikas. Man merkt eigentlich nicht, wie die Zeit vergeht - es sei denn in der Abfolge der verschiedenen Generationen. Aber auch wenn es tiefste Provinz ist, wo die Einwohner die Dramatik der Geschichte nur durch gelegentliche Botschaften, durch seltene Ausblicke in die Welt erfahren, hier passieren wirklich spannende Dinge: Menschen lieben, sterben, kämpfen um ihr Glück, bekommen Kinder, werden in Ehren alt oder verrückt, haben Erfolg oder scheitern. In den intensivsten Momenten des Buches haben sie Sehnsucht.

Das Buch wird auch sprachlich sehr gelobt, hier muss ich aber sagen, das der Rezensent der Muttersprache des Autors, also dem Spanisch, leider nicht mächtig ist, also darüber nur schwer eine Aussage treffen kann. Die deutsche Übersetzung liest sich schön, auch wenn es nicht immer einfach ist, die vielen Personen, Namen und Geschichten immer auseinander zu halten.

Wie schon gesagt, ein Klassiker.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" is a fascinating allegory of the unconscious -- a world of magical and mythical dreamscapes gradually reduced to the mundaneness of ordinary life. The work celebrates the fiery energy of creative expression, but also the dissipation of that energy. By the end of the novel, the reader is drawn not to the story particularly but to the imagination behind the story. We are left to contemplate the mysterious relationship between imagination and actuality. Does the profound impression by the author's imagination constitute something real? The author presumably and resoundingly says yes, as the final chapters, pages, and sentences inch towards actualization ( completion! wholeness! ). Only in decline and death can the imagination's creation be actualized -- a stirring of the soul to a greater awareness and love. ( )

Es uno de esos libros que te envuelve con sus historias, no queres dejar de leer,...y te hace comprender como puede llegar a sentir una persona en este mundo, las diferentes maneras de amar,..me encanto! ( )

This book is a dense, richly woven tapestry of language and characters, so tighly intertwined and overlapped that by the end it is impossible to pull the thread of a single life free from the others around it. For all the density, though, it was a surprisingly fast read. The only confusion I had at any point was with the repetition of the names (in the most extreme example, there are at least twenty characters named Aureliano), and even this need to do a double take about which Aureliano or which José Arcadio we're checking back in with fits the circular and cyclical patterns of the story.

The Buendía family, the house they live in, and the town of Macondo are so connected that it is hard not to think of them as a single entity, and the clashes and periods of relative peace within the microcosm of this one household as representative of the atmosphere in the town as a whole. Also, the surreal elements that Márquez incorporates are done with great subtlety, and within lives and circumstances that are otherwise almost entirely unremarkable. By the time we start questioning Colonel Aureliano Buendía's uncanny ability to thwart attempts on his life, we're too invested in this family and this town and this story to not just take it in stride. And once we've accepted this, it's a short series of very small steps to believing that Ursula or Pilar lived to ages bordering on the absurd, or that there really could be a man who is followed everywhere by a cloud of butterflies, or that one room in the house remains impeccably clean so long as it's inhabited by the ghost of a gypsy watching the progress of generations of the Buendía family attempting to interpret his mysterious parchments...

Excellent read, lovely prose, fascinating characters, highly recommended. ( )

Sprawling, wonderful.

My alltime favourite ( )

Probably the single most excellent piece of literature I have read as of yet.. While reading it, I was overwhelmed by the sense of depth and complexity that the text brought forth at every turn, yet I was constantly drawn forward by the matter-of-factness and loving, but not excessive, attention to detail of the prose. This book is unique in that it has many main characters, namely the members of the Buendia family who walk through time in what seems to be a circular fashion, enduring events both realistic and mythical. From the beginning the author expresses intent to make the very town of Macondo a character, possibly the most important. ( )

In my opinion one of the most overrated books ever. Whether it was intentional or not, it's a mess ! Did not finish ( )

Have you ever wished that the book you are reading now will never end?
Were you ever so spell-bound to a book that you forgot the surroundings, the time and the place in which you are living?
Will you take the book that you are reading right now (as the only book permitted) to a lonely deserted island?
When you finished reading the book, were you deeply sad and feeling nostalgic about times, places and pepole you have actually never experienced?
Were you sad that you have already read the book because you will never exprience again the pleasure of the first reading?

If the answer to the above is No, you must read this book!

My answer to all the questions above is a strong, decisive and uncompromizing YES. To me Gabriel Garcia Marquez is not just a writer. He is also a magician - a magician of the imagination. 'One Hunderd Years of Solitude' is a snake of a book and the reader is the mouse. Not only does the reader gulps the book but the book also swallows the reader. I could even read this book while lying on a nail bed. I, for sure, will read it every two years or so until my eyes cannot read any more - when they are closed for eternity. ( )

Like getting lost in a whirlwind. ( )

Low rating because I have only ever gotten halfway through it. Excellent and captivating writing - very thought-provoking, and some deep characters and relationships. But it is so slow and deep...like sticky molassas for me. I keep getting stuck and lost and eventually bored...and I have trouble getting through it. Maybe someday I will... ( )

I read this book before it became popular and it surprised and mystified me. I wasnt sure how to take it it ranges from the fantastic to the sad, brutal to the great. A look into the world of Latin America. ( )

"...They must always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end." (p. 433)The best summaries usually come somewhere near the end of a story... Not an easy read, but an interesting one. 3 1/2 stars. ( )

it took me 3 attempts to get into this book but i'm glad i did. ( )

"palamuwenna gasaka beda thabai.. anthimaya kuubi kai.." Magical realism and epic-style novel, I recommend this mesmerizing book! From the tropics of Columbia, beginning with Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula across six generations. A richly, detailed wild account of 100 years of a family. Fun and crazy and yet seriously heartfelt and taken back. An enjoyable book with yellow butterflies, Remedios who shaves her head - wears homespun clothes while having sex in the bathroom with a strange man. Very creative how this writer lined up such story; with the Columbian history, guerrillas in the jungle, governments supporting capitalists raping peasants in the banana plantations, and covering the murder of 3,000 labor protestors. The descriptions of the natural settings, the everyday life the village, and the people’s joy and terror - a roller coaster ride - to say the least - interesting and yet ridiculously vivid. ( )

My favourite book of all time. I recently re-read it and I still love it. ( )

I knew this book was famous and that its author had won a Nobel Prize; in fact, I was slightly concerned about reading it because I usually find that books which are covered in impressive accolades fail to live up to their hype. (‘The greatest novel in any language of the last fifty years’, boasts the Penguin edition on the front cover – crikey! I’d better like it then, or I’m clearly an ignorant savage.) However, I was totally unaware that it was a ‘magical realism’ novel, which would have been useful to know before I started reading it with more conventional expectations. I have not read anything from this genre before, but it seems to mean that when amazingly beautiful daughters disappear into the sky, nobody bats an eyelid. And that it can rain for four years. Solidly. And that whole towns can suffer from insomnia plagues that give them ever-worsening amnesia, until they need to label cows with ‘This is the cow. She must be milked every morning.’ Magic realism means, in short, that anything is possible.

Of course, knowing this might have prevented me from trying it at all, but if anything was really going to put me off, it would have been the family tree at the beginning. Family trees at the beginning of books suggest two things to me: firstly, that the novel will move between generations in families, preventing me from following one or even a few characters through to a satisfying conclusion; secondly, that I will struggle to understand the novel without referring to it.

Setting my prejudices aside, I settled down to read and was struck by the famous opening sentence:

‘Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.’

I was enthralled by the possibilities, and the next few lines clearly set out the notion that this was a history of a family and a town. It is an odd sort of history though because, as the opening makes clear, the narrative moves restlessly between past, present and future without ever referencing specific dates or really suggesting any particular length of time. The narrative alights upon a particular time frame and character and lingers there for a while, like a butterfly hovering, then neatly hops into another time frame, often only prefaced with something like ‘When Aureliano was older…’ In this way, Marquez creates a sense that what happens is constantly happening and un-happening: everything is cyclical but also moving towards death. This is also emphasised by the repetition of character names through generations: each Aureliano and Arcadio inherits their original namesakes’ strengths and deficiencies, seemingly doomed to sustain a blinkered view of the world that ultimately destroys them.

Insofar as the novel is chronological, the reader follows the development of the town as it becomes gradually industrialised and insidiously controlled by a despotic government who gradually become an irrelevance in a fading world. The way this is told, the progress often sounds faintly mythical in its steady growth and strange appearance. The book could be considered a commentary on modern society and the way it ultimately decays in on itself. The possibility of this and many other potential interpretations is what kept me reading even when I found (or rather, confirmed) that magic realism really isn’t one of my preferred reading genres. The multiplicity of bizarre events and repetition of points seemed to suggest that there must be an overall meaning to the work.
It is ultimately a dark story, although it is brightened considerably by the almost poetic language. Whether this is Marquez or the translator of this edition I don’t know, but at times this is what kept me reading when the episodic nature of the novel itself suggested a natural moment to stop. The family tree became essential as I read on and Marquez spent less time on each subsequent generation, or perhaps simply spread himself thinner by following the lives of several members of each generation. This could make for quite frustrating reading: which Amaranta was this? At what point in the family’s turbulent history was this Arcadio disappearing into the background?

I nearly stopped reading out of irritation, but once I had completed the whole novel I was seduced by the ending into feeling more generously towards the story; I would suggest to anyone who is tempted to give up that it is worth continuing for the sense of closure and mystery that the ending allows. Of course, I was four fifths of the way through already, so if you’re only a few chapters in and loathing it, then I probably wouldn’t bother. Actually, it’s worth noting at this point that the chapters are extremely long, as are the paragraphs, which can stretch to a page and a half easily, in small font, with very little dialogue. In fact, there’s very little reported conversation between characters, which adds to the sense that they are all isolated from each other and the world. Two consecutive lines of speech is the most you’ll find, followed by another lengthy passage describing attitudes, feelings and the passing of time.

So is it worth reading? If you’re a fan of magical realism, or think you could grow to be, then yes. If you’re just picking it up because ‘it’s a classic’ I’d recommend thinking more carefully about its likely appeal. Although I was not gripped by the storyline, in retrospect the meandering style is quite enjoyable and the strangeness gently interesting, so it’s certainly worth trying if you’re looking for something a bit different. ( )

While not my "cup of tea," I found Marquez' literary devices rich and intriguing. My favorite is his use of character names that repeat with only slight variations through each generation. Slipping back and forth between reality and fantasy was distracting for me, but others in my book club found that it added an entire layer of thought they found fascinating. ( )

This is a rare re-read for me. In my 20's I felt as if this was the best book I had ever read and I still list it as one of my favorites . . . but can you continue to say that if you never re-read books? So, after at least ~ 15 years I have given it another go. Now, I am sad. Do I leave it rated as a 5 star masterpiece with the magical eyes of nostalgia or do I rate it with my somewhat cynical and jaded current eyes of realism?

So, unfortunately this time through I felt as if this odyssey of the cursed Buendia family bordered on the nonsensical. I failed to grasp the 'realism' in this, this bible of magical realism. There are somethings that are haunting - the yellow butterflies, the Sanskrit parchments, the little golden fishes, the cloc-cloc of the bones. And I did appreciate some of the allegory, or the themes of history reapeating itself; the sins of the fathers; the power of nostalgia.

I cannot deny the spell and influence this book had on me when I was young and the world was wide open to me. It does have merit and beauty and inspires an almost - I don't know - a morbid fascination in the reader. But for the life of me, I could not fully enjoy it this time. The characters just behaved in inexplicable, outlandish, unpredicatable ways -- can you really tell a cogent story when there are no rules?

Overall, this leaves me fearful to re-read some other of my favorites from the past. Disillusioned, I will leave it with my updated 3 1/2 star recommendation. I am not sure if it is the fault of Marquez or my withered heart and imagination. Perhaps I'll go hole myself up in a dark room with my books and not speak or wash for the rest of my life . . . ( )

What a fantastic read. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's sweeping tale of the rise and fall of the Buendia family was completely different from anything I've read before. The use of magical realism, rather than turning me off as it often has done in the past, complemented perfectly the stunning characters that Marquez painted. I can't wait to read more of his stuff. Highly recommended, even if this is outside of your usual comfort zone/genre. ( )

I have started this book three times and cannot get past page 55.