One Hundred Years of Solitude
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| Also a book from Oprah Winfrey's Book Club! ... Well, Shit... |
Want to know about Magical Realism? Read the genre! If you still don't get it, then look at the culture that started it all and the theories on the whys and hows.
So, after a visit to the library, I acquired three Magical Realism books. Two were genre-definers and one is just part of the genre and the one author who works inside the genre that I know. The two books I got were One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (obviously) and House of Spirits by Isabel Allende (probably the next review or one of the reviews for next week). The familiar work? Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. I know it's predictable, but I don't care. I'm in love with that woman's writing and there's not a darn thing you can do about it so live with it or start reading her work too!
So, One Hundred Years of Solitude is like no other book I've ever read before in my life. It's very hard to get into. I had to start doing my "forced read" method. What that means is, I'm having trouble getting through a book, so I get two bookmarks. One bookmark, I use to track where I am. The second bookmark is where I have to be by the time I go to bed the next night. Once I reach the second bookmark or the day ends, I move it back 100 pages and the cycle continues until the book is finished. Basically, it breaks the book up for me so I don't feel overwhelmed that this book is so slow to read through and there's so much of it. I only have to read 100 pages of the book that day, if I go over, brilliant! If I don't, I have that plus another 100 pages the next day. It somewhat takes the fun out of reading, but mostly it just keeps me from distracting myself by reading fanfiction or playing Kingdom Hearts or whatever else I can come up with to do instead because reading the book in question is hard at points.
I do it for George R.R. Martin too. 1,000+ pages is daunting to get through!
The reason One Hundred Years of Solitude is difficult to get into, for me, is because of the tone and the pacing. There are parts of the book where things seem to be happening so fast, you have to reread it to understand what's going on. There are other points where the narrative is moving so slow. And there's tangents. And there are moments that flash back and flash forward so that it feels both timeless and stuck in a certain time all at once. Actually, it feels like I'm listening to a story told by a Latin American version of my Grandma Bonnie and she's not really cognizant of the time period she's in right now and her mind jumps around so you aren't sure where her mind is, but you're trying to figure it out while at the same time you only asked her how she and her husband met... which somehow led her to explaining her whole family tree to you.
This is a whole book of that. It's wonderful. It takes fantasy and reality and blends it in such a way that you aren't sure if it is fantasy, reality or a trick being played on these poor, ignorant villagers. They see the ghosts of the dead at certain points and you don't know if they're hallucinating in their old age and regret for past wrong-doings or if there really is a ghost there. The characters marvel over magnets, magnifying glasses, magic carpets, alchemy and ice... all in one chapter!
We're so used to ice, but to think of what a wonder it'd be to someone who had never seen it before and to read about it and feel it the way the characters feel it. It blew me away in a sense. The idea that ice was as magical as a flying carpet or a giant magnet made me put the book down for a bit and take stock of the world I live in. A world where we just had ice crystals falling from the sky!
One character never forgets the ice and the narration leads back to it several times. Meanwhile, there's an ancient gypsy that won't die and may come back to life and then his ghost is running around... but that's normal. People have premonitions of the future, especially one character, but that's ordinary. People who can see the future are born all the time in the town of Macondo. However, they've only seen ice once, and it's miraculous.
From what I've read about the book, it's supposed to actually be an allegory for Columbia. Considering the end of the book, I'm not sure how I feel about that. The book is also apparently full of symbolism and part of that symbolism is the repetition.
It's an interesting story, but I wouldn't read it again.
Would I suggest you read it?
Umm... if your interested? Maybe? But, if you aren't, I'd suggest you read Story Sisters... or watch a movie. Any movie. TWILIGHT!
Yeah... It is interesting, but it's also depressing. The characters seem almost doomed to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors over and over and over again until the magical city of Macondo is destroyed. I mean, if this is an allegory for Columbia, then Mr. Marquez must not have liked it very much... or he liked certain elements, but he knew those elements wouldn't save it.
Then again, everything dies. Everything is destroyed. It's how we remember it in then end that matters. And Macondo will live in the hearts of all who read this book.
Poor buggers.
This book was in my wishlist from the day it was declared in Oprah's Book Club, I guess in the year 2003. And finally when I actually got to read it, I think it was worth the wait. I lived with Ursula all from the very beginning from the discovery of Mocondo to the death of the last heir of the family after 100 year! Recommended to all readers and the family tree would be a great help provided at the beginning of the book since you are passing on to several generations in a single book. Congratulations to the Author!
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