“One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Uhhh, I didn’t love this book.

The author’s main point here seems to be that life is cyclical, that there are repeating instances that have occurred and will occur again. And the way he shows this is by documenting the story of a family, the Buendias, over one hundred years.

Seems like an interesting premise. But it’s the little things about this book that really bother me.

All of the characters have the same names. You think I’m kidding, the boys cycle between Jose Arcadio and Aureliano. There is a little more variety with the girls, but it’s mostly Amaranta and Remedios. There is a family tree at the beginning of the novel, but honestly unless you read it in one sitting (which I don’t recommend) you’re going to get mixed up about who is the child of who and all that. Which adds to the cyclical nature of the story, so you cannot say that the author didn’t know what he was doing.

But you never have the time to get to know any of these characters. There are chapters where people are born and die and you never get to know any of them, or really effectively care about them. Sure, there are some chapters that focus on one character more than the other, but that just results in characters popping out of the woodwork later on and vying for your attention. Again, the author calls himself out of this, saying in later chapters that time passes more quickly than it used to, as kids appear out of nowhere.

That’s what really bothered me, the fact that as a reader we were never given a good reason to care about these characters or the time to get to know them. The structure seems more like a history book showing a dynasty than anything else.

The glimpses of characters that we do see didn’t leave me very happy either. As I mentioned, it’s the history of the family, so most of the stories that we hear about them have to do with who’s having sex and kids with who. And of course, every male gets with at least someone at some point while Amaranta dies a virgin. Nice. Ugh.

Overall it is a very male centered view of the house, despite the fact that Ursula manages to live almost throughout the entire book and runs the whole place. In spite of this, it’s the men who are always portrayed as the smart, strong continuers of the family line. Which irritated me, even though it’s probably the author being true to the culture. Still bothers me.

You cannot deny that the writing is nice, even though the subjects of it are irritating. The way that Marquez just casually drops in supernatural effects on the town is pretty nice. And gives the feel that everything is an ancient tale being passed down and slightly modified. But then there’s also random instances of it (such as when the men kill a devil-like creature in town) that just seem like they were inserted for the heck of it without having any real purpose.

I might have enjoyed this more if I read something else by Marquez first (although I don’t know what book that would be), but as it is, I was not a huge fan of this work, despite the fact that millions everywhere have heralded it as amazing and all.