One Hundred Years of Solitude || Gabriel Garcia Marquez

My first look into a Marquez novel; recommended by the good literary people in the greatpoets community. The book, plotwise disappointed me on some level. But the brilliant writing of Marquez really attracts me to more of his works. He describes the world as if it has its own emotion.  In this book, he tells the story of a fictional town which, thaks to his creative imagination and the beautiful collection of his words, we can easily learn to love as if it was real..

Comments:

The book showcases how a town is born, and how it remains to live. It also focuses on the Buendia family which is basically the heart and pulse of the town. Progress, culture, technology, starts from them and it flourishes itself with the town's collective identity. In retrospect, we learn about human emotions in the book: peace, power, liberty, personal reflection, passion, and love from different characters.

The characters themselves, may not be all lovalbe, but the narration has a way of voicing out their feelings/emotions. We learn the complexity of life; how each person may carry a long and special story within them that other ca never understand or learn. People in their own honest way are special.

Good:

- The descriptions and the imagery attached with it were very creative and unique.

- Like a bunch of interesting stories from different perspectives blended in one big story.

- The story makes you think of your own family history. That is how wide and diverse the though inside the book is.

Bad:

- It is hard to empathize and to get attached with the characters because they don't seam to carry a unique personality or voice. They let their passions dictate who they are, but it isn't very passionate that you can relate with them. On the few times you do, it is because of Marquez poetic talent.

Quotables:



 but the streets were as slippery and as smooth as melted soap, and one had to guess distances in the darkness.

-          One Hundred Years of Solitude, 117. Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

He kept on examining her, discovering the miracle of her intimacy inch by inch, and he felt his skin tingle as he contemplated the way her skin tingled when it touched the water.

-          One Hundred Years of Solitude, 142. Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

She realized that Colonel Aureliano Buendia had not lost his love for the family because he had been hardened by the war, as she had thought before, but that he had never loved anyone, not even his wife Remedios or the countless one-night women who had passed through his life, and much less his sons. She sensed that he had fought so many wars not out of idealism, as everyone had though, nor had he renounced a certain victory because of fatigue, as everyone had thought, but that he had won and lost for the same reason, pure and sinful pride. She reached the conclusion that the son for whom she would have given her life was simply a man incapable of love.

-          One Hundred Years of Solitude, 248. Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The air was so damp that the fish could have come in through the doors and swum out the windows, floating through the atmosphere in the rooms.

-          One Hundred Years of Solitude, 316. Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

“What hurts me most,” she would say, laughing, “is all the time that we wasted.”

-          One Hundred Years of Solitude, 405. Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

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Reference: Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. 1967.  One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.