"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 . . . ( )