A sad and enchanting book. ( )

Cien años de soledad es una historia perfecta: tragedia, triunfo y el círculo de la vida. Desde las primeras líneas hasta la última página, Gabriel García Márquez, mezcla magia con realidad para crear personajes inolvidables. Es el primer libro que leo en español y la poesía de cada línea me hace enamorarme aún más del idioma.

It is a flawless representation of the human experience. I will read it again in English and again in Spanish and treasure this work for all of its profound insights. ( )

Ӕ

Harold Bloom describes his response as being “aesthetic battle fatigue” I had a very similar response. paused around the 50% mark. Post civil war, pre-banana massacre.

I started reading this book more than 25 years ago and just could not get into. In fact, I still had the bookmark in it where I abandoned in that last attempt. I set out to read it again and struggled at the beginning. The only reason I persevered was because I chose this book for our book club. Part of what I found most difficult was the numerous characters with the same or similar names, and given that the story is not told in linear time, it was easy to confuse them. But as I got deeper into the story, I became more invested and found that I was enjoying it. It is the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, the patriarch of which, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the (fictional) town of Macondo, a rural Colombian village closer to the coast of the Caribbean than the Pacific. The village is visited by gypsies who bring the discoveries of the world beyond with them as they pass through periodically, exciting the imagination (and obsessions) of José Arcadio, whose wife, Úrsula Iguarán, puts up with his foolishness.

Interestingly, the female figures in the book are the ones who more often than not show wisdom and sanity (although not all of them) and live the longest. I don't know if there is meant to be symbolism in the fantastical events, but over time I got used to the strange moments. I also struggled relating to or even caring about the characters, and yet the story still held my interest. While I read the first quarter of the book over a period of about three weeks - in part because I did not have a lot of free time, but also in part because I was struggling with it - I read the last nearly 300 pages in one day. Through his masterful storytelling, Gabriel García Márquez captured some key elements of Colombian history in the 20th century - how it affected the people in the more primitive and remote areas from guerilla warfare to the arrival of the railway, movies, telephones, cars, American (US) exploitation of natural resources (in this case, bananas), clashes between Liberals and Conservatives, the exploitation of plantation workers, who eventual go on strike and are later massacred - depending on whose version of history gets told and whose gets wiped out. ( )

Finally finished Cien Anos de Soledad. I read the English version translated by Gregory Rabassa. Some last lines of this novel has a melancholy effects on me.
“Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”

So their life was a curse, so their magical town was a curse, so there was nothing but a condemned life in Buendias family and their mad house was condemned too. The last line really has a dramatic effect on me, ‘races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.’ Like, I realized it then that after all, we’re all humans and we’re all condemned with our desolation, our solitude, and in the end, we’re nothing but a race that walk rights into our fear.

The saddest part of Cien Anos de Soledad, I think, is the fact that time is cicling. Jose Arcadio Buendia killed Prudencio Agullar due to his lament joke about Jose Arcadio Buendia’s marriage. Meanwhile, Jose Arcadio Buendia still didn’t have a child because of Ursula Iguaran’s fear. His wife was scared with incest, with the certain truth of future about their marriage. Fear is an energy and it was transformed into rage which killed Prudencio Agullar. Yet the energy was still there, since the dead Prudencio Agullar was comically haunting Jose Arcadio Buendia. It then led them to ran away, finding Macondo. The irony of it was Jose Arcadio Buendia thought Macondo as Eden, yet it was only a sad and devastating sanctuary for him. He was cursed and his family was cursed since the day he killed Prudencio Agullar, and Ursula Iguaran was cursed and her family was cursed since the day she consummated her marriage. The fear and guilt they had had lasted them into the family with seven generations, yet life in fear was nothing and there’s no love in their life. The one who dare to loved was finally died alone, drowned in their solitudeness and desolation, yet the rest lived long enough with a solitude air between them. ( )

I now understand why this sprawling (a major understatement), multi-generational novel is considered a literary classic. If I rated it strictly on ambition and scope it would earn an A+. It is dazzling in that respect. There is much to admire in these dense pages, as we follow the same family living in the small town of Macondo, tucked somewhere in South America. It is also an exhausting read and keeping track of the characters, many sharing the same or similar names grew tiresome at times, along with it’s repetitive narrative. That said, it will not be a novel I will soon forget and I still give it a solid rating but just be forewarned at the challenges ahead. ( )

The whole thing exists under this dream-logic where nothing makes sense in a way that totally makes sense. I re-read this recently and I realized that it might be my favorite book ever. ( )

It felt like it took me 100 years to read through this novel. It's not that I didn't like it, because it's good literature, but it didn't captivate me in a way that made me read it continuously.

It was hard to get used to the style of the prose. Almost rambling, tangential statements that easily lost me. But I got used to them and appreciated the style after a while. The mythical sense of the story (almost like Greek myths, if they were all combined in one volume) was fun, in a way.

I didn't LOVE the book, but I'm glad I read it. It's literature of a quality that any 'real' reader should be obligated to read. ( )

There is a books that you find... and there is a books that find you. One day you wake up and just hear the voice - "today you will start reading me, no more excuses". And you accept your fate like it was written by someone else for what is life if not some story written with other lives.

What a journey it was. It was so much fun in the beginning, the style - I have never seen anything like that. Actually I always thought that is how stories should be written - short, to the point, only the most important stuff. And only by the half you understand that you reading a very very dark thing, the horror of understanding what a cruel joke this all is. I think any reader can almost pinpoint the sentence where this understanding really happen for them. Suddenly you recoil in horror, you look at what you just have read and finally get it. It is a book about life. Really. ( )

I wish I remembered more about this book. It was a long while ago.

If The Grapes of Wrath and The Satanic Verses had a baby and moved to Latin America, it would be named One Hundred Years of Solitude. There were things that I liked and things that I didn't. I had to slow down to absorb it and I still feel like I missed a lot. I liked it, maybe a second time around (years from now) I'll love it. ( )

Cien años de soledad (Edición conmemorativa)
Gabriel García Márquez
Publicado: 1967 | 354 páginas
Novela Drama

«Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo». Con estas palabras empieza una novela ya legendaria en los anales de la literatura universal, una de las aventuras literarias más fascinantes de nuestro siglo. Millones de ejemplares de Cien años de Soledad leídos en todas las lenguas y el premio Nobel de Literatura coronando una obra que se había abierto paso "boca a boca".La Real Academia Española y la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española presentan Cien años de soledad, una edición popular conmemorativa cuyo texto ha revisado el propio Gabriel García Márquez.A pesar del esmero con que el propio escritor corrigió las pruebas de la primera edición (Sudamericana, 1967), se deslizaron en ella indeseadas erratas y expresiones dudosas que editores sucesivos han tratado de resolver con mejor o peor fortuna. Un estudio comparativo detallado de cada caso ha permitido ahora presentar una propuesta razonada al propio autor, que ha querido revisar las pruebas de imprenta completas, enriqueciendo así esta edición con su trabajo de depuración y fijación del texto.

This book is notoriously hard to get through in one go, and I completely understand why, but I somehow did not have this problem.

Maybe it will make more sense if I explain the conditions under which I read this book. I had just taken a 10 hour bus ride from Oaxaca to Puerto Escondido, having spent five exhausting weeks teaching English in the city (yes, it really took 10 hours, yes that is way longer than it should have taken). Upon arriving at the beach, I discovered there was nothing to do that didn't cost a lot of money and involve sitting in the very hot sun. So, like any sane person, I spent nearly the entirety of my four days there holed up in my hotel room reading this book. Everyone else on the trip thought I had lost my mind; I would emerge at dinner time spewing nonsense about pig tails and banana revolts. The poor soul who found themselves seated next to me could only nod in fear as I whipped out my book and forced them to listen to a summary of what I had read for the day, gesturing at the family tree all the while. Only one other person on the trip had read it, and even she thought I was a little too obsessed. So yes, it is possible to read this book without getting stuck, but it will consume you if you are not careful.

That being said, I understand why people struggle with it. The sentences are often the length of a normal paragraph and the paragraphs are pages long. On top of that, there are so many characters, and they all share pretty much the same four-ish names, so it can be hard to keep track of. When I described the plot to my coworker upon my return, I had to pull up a family tree so he would have any chance of following the story. If you can get through all of that (and it is possible), it is an extremely satisfying read. I wish I could read it again for the first time, if only to feel that same sense of accomplishment with every extremely long, twisted chapter I finished. ( )

The main thing I loved about this book was the scope and ambition that speaks through the story. I remember after reading the first few chapters, thinking "is he really going to keep this up for another few hundred pages?". And, while the story did lose some of its momentum at a point, he really did. I think I did not mind that loss of momentum, because that, for me, was where I began to see the larger picture that Márquez was trying to paint. On top of that, writing a proper ending to such an epic seems to be very difficult for most writers, but Márquez did not dissapoint on this point at all. This book will probably be on my mind for some time. ( )

La ultima vez que lei este libro fue en 2011. Me ha encantado poder revisitarlo practicamente como si lo estuviera leyendo por primera vez ( )

"It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of [nagging wives][sic]." — Fredric Jameson Márquez

Spivak occasionally comments on how so-called "magical realism" became the identifiable trait of the so-called "subaltern novel" in large part due to the geographical proximity of these writers to English-language publishers in the United States. The category of magical-subaltern-realism seems particularly fraught because it remains to be seen whether a text has ever survived the insertion of such an Intra-Fabular Device, and which therefore functions to condemn these works twice. ( )

Una novela encantadora, si bien recomiendo tomar apuntes de la genealogía. ( )

Neste clássico de Gabriel García Marques, conheça as fabulosas aventuras dos Buendía-Iguarán, com seus milagres, fantasias e dramas que representam famílias do mundo inteiro. Romance fundamental na história da literatura, Cem anos de solidão apresenta uma das mais fascinantes aventuras literárias do século XX. Vencedora do Prêmio Nobel de Literatura, uma obra que todos devíamos ter em nossas estantes.

A classic first published in 1967 - I read this very, very bizarre book on the recommendation of my creative writing teacher while stationed in Newport, Oregon, back around 1999. I had written a particular piece about how my father loved to pour concrete and create things with it. He made rows of concrete fish for yard decor and large potted planters for placement throughout the yard. Then came the concrete covered parking, then the concrete patio near the bayou, and finally just a large oval concrete slab for us three girls to roller skate on and play tetherball. By the time he was finished, many years later, he had concreted about 3/4 of our property.

She said my writing style in that story was just like this author's and that I should read it. I can't say I loved it or even understood or remember just what it was he was writing about. I seem to remember something about a guy who fell asleep under a tree and didn't wake up for a thousand years later. It's now 2021. I would have to reread it to remember what it was even about. ( )

I've started to read this book 3 times before and never made it through the first 20 pages.   This time i got over 1/3 of the way through it, and that was more than enough to call it a day.   So read this review with that in mind.

This book is the literary equivalent of a crap TV soap opera.   The characters are mostly inbred and somewhat retarded.   There are too many characters, most of which either have the same name or very similar names.   And just when you thought there was more than enough of one name a whole bunch of illegitimate children would turn up and Gabriel would give them all the same name of the father.   It's like grandson named after son named after father named after great uncle named after grandfather.   And this goes on and on until you aren't quite sure who you're reading about.   Adding to the too many characters with the same name, there are also too many characters with similar names.   Then you get time shifts, where suddenly you're reading something that happened to a 'name' (because you can never be sure which character that name is) previously and then it's back to present then off to the future and then it's now again but you don't get any structure to it, and it's just utter chaos.

On top of all that chaos, they're all related somehow because incest seems to be a perfectly normal thing amongst these backward, inbred people.   And every few pages a new child is thrown into the mix named after someone already in the story who is then adopted and raised by someone other than its parents.   And the incest and adoption is so confusing that you're never quite sure who is related to who in what way, thus leading to more incest, adoption and confusion.

Oh, sure, i could have done due diligence and made a big effort to work out who exactly is who when a name appears, but i shouldn't have to.   I don't read books to make tedious and pointless work for myself.   I read books to enjoy the escape from tedium, for fun and recreation, to enjoy the experience of losing myself.

You can never lose yourself in this book if you want to understand what is going on because you're always having to work at who is who and how they're related to each other in what generation, etc., etc..

Then there's the liberal use of Deus Ex Machina.   Create a problem, that of everyone losing their memories, and then solve it when someone turns up with a magical potion and everything's suddenly ok again.   And what was the point of it all and where have we got with the actual story?

And that's the question: what is the actual story here?   All i get is a never ending cacophony of incest, illegitimate children, adoption of each other's illegitimate children, giving them names of already existing characters into the maelstrom of same and similar named characters that already exist, and stupid behaviour with ever more and more characters from other places being thrown in, even when completely unnecessary.

How this book is classed as a paragon of Spanish literature is beyond me.   I suppose it's the same crowd that think Shakespeare and Dickens are paragons of English literature.   And guess what?   You won't ever find any Shakespeare or Dickens amongst my reviews.

It's not that i can't handle lots of characters: i've read the Riftwar saga by Raymond E. Feist and similar great sagas of fantasy and sci-fi, and i've never been confused.   Why?   Because they give them all distinctive names.

It's not that i have a problem with non English names: i've read lots of fantasy, sci-fi and also translated books by lots of non English writers, never been a problem.   Why?   Because they give them all distinctive names.

I can only think that this was done on purpose to make some literary point, but this literary point is completely lost on me.   Why create utter chaos within your character structure, add too many characters even when completely unnecessary to the story, give the characters same or similar names to add more confusion, throw never ending incest and inbreeding into the mix and then get them to adopt each other's children and then don't tell the children who their parents are so you can look forward to more incest?   The point certainly isn't made in the first 1/3rd of the book and if a writer can't be bothered to hook me into a story in that time then the book goes in the delete bin.

The other issue with all this character chaos is that you never can bond with any of the characters.

I like a book that gives me some central characters who i can bond with, root for and believe in.   Characters that i can identify, who stand out and make sense of the story for me.   I like a book that simply loses me in the story.   When i read a book the only part of me that has to do anything is my thumb, turning the pages on my Kindle: i don't want to be having to stop and think about what's happening, the story should flow and make sense of itself without my having to make a load of effort to make it make sense.   And i don't like soap operas and those kind of pathetic characters, repeating the same stupid mistakes over and over again and never learning anything.   If i want a soap opera i could watch television.   I don't watch television!   I read books!

My final pronouncement on this book is that it is a work for voyeurs with a niche fetish of viewing incest who enjoy crappy TV soap operas who are happy with Deus Ex Machina being deployed to solve every problem that served no literary purpose other than to deploy the Deus Ex Machina in the first place.

Utterly ridiculous! ( )

¿Qué puedo decir de esta obra que no se haya dicho antes? Es simplemente extraordinaria y siempre vale la pena una relectura, en esta ocasión con una buena edición en audiolibro. ( )

So, occasionally, I step outside my genre preferences and read something that's critically acclaimed or everyone is talking about. I would have pointed to another review for mine for 2022, but this is the better example.

This book is epic in its undertaking, but it reads almost like a history book accounting "facts" of these people's lives. The book is a family saga that spans seven generations of strange and unusual characters--each a bit cracked in one way or another. Some of the characters were super fascinating and could support a whole novel alone. Amarantha may have been the best example of this. Or Jose Arcadio Buendida (who left the town and clearly became a pirate for a time before returning).

Unfortunately, the distant POV of the narrator and summarization style of writing left me unable to connect on an emotional level with any of the players in this family saga. In the end, I was left with a meh taste.

It could have been better. Something that really hit on the human spirit.

I do appreciate the reflection of the periods of history from the Colombian POV and how they shaped and formed society and Mocanda (sp?) as a microcosm of the whole.

Note: given that this was written in the late 1960s, there is terminology common in the time period but is today considered offensive. ( )

Honestly I'm excited to be done with it, as unpopular of an opinion that might be. It just drags on forever. If you can get past the rampant incest and pedophilia (and dear lord is there a lot of incest and pedophilia) the characters aren't particularly remarkable. They all feel like caricatures of themselves. All their attributes are multiplied times 100, and they all seem so unrealistic, and lack depth. The names were a bit confusing, but that seemed intentional so I didn't really mind, I kinda leaned into it. The magical realism elements were interesting, and led to lots of mysteries in the town that never really get explained, which I liked. I'll admit, the writing at times, was beautiful. But honestly those moments of beauty were few and far between. I only noticed the prose maybe once every 50 or so pages? For a book as universally hailed as this one, I expected wayyyy more on the quality of writing/prose. Maybe it needs to be read in Spanish?

What am I missing? What makes this book such an important book? ( )

"Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages)would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth."

Thusly Marquez finishes his fever dream of a novel, an amorphous, hallucinogenic history of a family and a town and the tragedy and cyclical nature of history and being alive. In this story, everything is foreshadowed and everything repeats itself. It is not a question of fate, or free will, or biology? Can we escape the burden of the past - or should we? ( )