I finally finished it. After four months, and several books read in between, I was able to put down this Gabriel Garcia Marquez masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude.What I am to write here would sound like a cross between an amateur and an eighth-grader having a hissy fit about a book report on the novel. (What's the point? It has gotten enough raves and accolades anyway - mine won't matter.) Not going to a lie, it was an interestingly hard read. I struggled through some chapters where names, events and timelines were all in a blur. No conversations - pure narrative straight through. Oh, how could the text have turned around if that part towards the end, the one involving "peach jam" had featured actual exchange of words. Or other non-verbal utterances.
On several occasions I had been tempted to rip off the page of the family tree and just tape it near wherever I'll read. Keeping up with the family members and who-is-named-what is part of the experience. Everyone is either named Arcadio, Aureliano, or Remedios... how about including a Miguel, Carlos, Fidel or Consuelo in there? Would have been easier than trying to figure out if the one coming home to Macondo this time around is Jose Arcadio #2 or number #57. The story of the family and the mythical town is mesmerizing indeed, with a scenario involving the fabled parchments towards the end, putting logic in a constant struggle within the personal stories: The meaning of said parchment and the prophecies outlined came full-circle.
On that note, I am off to start Tolstoy's War and Peace.
4 comments:
It's a great book. I read it a long time ago when I was living in California.
I can remember only snippets - the girl who floated up to the sky because she was too beautiful for this world, the guy who got a spear through the neck and haunted his killer, the banana revolt and the gunning down of civilians, the guy they chained up in the backyard, etc. There is a dream-like quality to the whole thing.
War and Peace? Bold! Sometimes I think Russian novelists were paid by the page.
Good memory of the book, Dave.
War and Peace is a bit of a brazen move, no? Hmm. I'll pick up Anna Karenina then! Kidding aside - Good point, along with being paid per page, there may have been be a vodka per bottle incentive.
hello charmaine. :) i bought the book around 2001, because I had a craving for the hispanics...but guess what...midway through the book, i lost track of all the characters and all the happenings, until I finally stopped reading it, only to take it up again in 2005 and REALLY finish it this time! Well, it really takes a hundred years to read...hehehe. ;)
Believe me, I almost gave up (actually, I did - which was why I ended up taking forever to get done...) Be strong, soldier - it will pick up towards the (not-so-very) end.
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