Collected Novellas (Leaf Storm, No One Writes to the Colonel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold)

10. Collected Novellas by Gabriel García Márquez
translators Gregory Rabassa & J. S. Bernstein
published: 1990
format: 281 page paperback
acquired: December
read: Feb 5 - 11
rating: 4½

It's a pity I waited so long to review these, but these novellas are the work of a, using the word of my flight attendant, master. Not sure I can capture much now.

[Leaf Storm] (1955)
This is a story of transition. In Márquez's fictional Macondo the Banana growers move in giving the town a burst of activity and industry, then this all fades and the town slowly reverts back to its former insignificance. The story here is about a doctor who comes to town and stays with a family, and doesn't leave until he's encouraged to move two houses down. Over the course of show more time this doctor runs a strong and then weakening practice, stops practicing, becomes reclusive and finally manages to accrue the hatred of most of the town. But the story, which switches narrators without warning, is largely about the family that originally boards him.

This story stands out for its various layers of complexity that I could pick up on a read through it. It's a very ambitious work and mostly works brilliantly

I was sitting across from the Indian woman, who spoke with an accent mixed with precision and vagueness, as if there was a lot of incredible legend in what she was recalling but also as if she was recalling it in good faith and even with the conviction that the passage of time had changed legend into reality that was remote but hard to forget.

[No One Writes to the Colonel] (1961)
A fully depressing story because it's hard not to like the colonel and his wife, as they starve waiting for a military pension to arrive that never will arrive.

[Chronicle of a Death Foretold] (1981)
Quite fun stuff about a murder that isn't a mystery. The narrator is part of the tale, but tells the tale as if he were a journalist writing an investigative essay, interviewing every key character and then trying to read between the lines. What comes out is psychologically meaningful and even touching, but does a lot of different stuff along the way.

2018
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First edition