One Hundred Years of Solitude
Ratings781
Average rating4.1
this is not a review, it's mostly about myself & my changing approach to this book. suck it, algorithm, private journals are for wimps
i read this and did the New Criticism shtick they tesch for AP lit as my elective book in my last year of high school. i walked in totally ignorant of latin america, having no context or guidance beyond a list of rhetorical devices to identify and the Wikipedia page on magical realism. well i thought the book was brilliant and did the project with gusto, unpacking symbols like i was working in a warehouse, i mean, you know how it is. for a long time i considered “one hundred years of solitude” my favorite book.
do i still think that? I don't know. what i remember remains impressive and beautiful, but I've probably cherry picked without knowing. there's got to be so much i missed fumbling around in the dark without a crumb of context, acting like I didn't need it. even a single undergrad class on contemp latin american lit made it clear to me how little i knew about latin america and that i still don't know shit, couldn't even scratch the surface.
but I'm loath to reread for the dumbest reason ever: i don't wanna spoil a good memory. i'm afraid that coming back now with my big eddicated brain would taint how i remember it, as a puzzle unfolding, a map to be read, a city of glass never seen in its entirety - memories of a simpler time, i guess, when the mystery of Close Reading felt like holy ritual and not an act of colonization. but then i owe it to myself to return, not as a puzzler or map-reader or a symbol-hunter but as a friend, to let it wash over me, to bask, to swirl up the mental stew of images and phrases from this book, which bubble up unbidden every now and then. there must be a reason they stuck around, i think. maybe some day I'll find it out.
I tried, I really did. But the grown arse man "fervently desiring" a 9 year old and marrying her a few years later was my last straw. Also all the incest and other shit. I felt physically ill reading this book, so I had to stop.
I just didn't get this book. Some of that, I'm sure, comes from the fact that I read it in Spanish, and while I like to tell myself that I speak excellent Spanish, reality would probably wound my ego, so I'm going to ignore that and focus on the book itself.
The plot–it moves so fast you feel like you're a dog with your head out the window of a car on a Utah freeway, the only ones where you can go 80 legally. You're driving through the state and trying to take in everything you see but it's just moving by so fast and your tongue, which you normally never have any problem keeping nice and wet, is somehow drying out in the wind and your eyes are flipping back and forth, grasping things that shine or glitter but not fast enough, you can just never quite get a good look at anything. What I mean by that, in case the metaphor missed, is that Every Sentence moves the plot forward and it is utterly exhausting.
The characters are flat and weird. They never change, are never motivated by anything other than their widely varying versions of human nature which they are born and die with and never evolve.
A lot of the time it is hard to discern the magic from the realism. Neither are very convincing, making the magic less magical and the realism less real. I've read that the 100 Years was influenced by Faulkner and I believe that, but wow, the worst parts of Faulkner. It feels like it's all the confusion and it tries to capture all the types and symbolism but it lacks the beauty and the depth. Just when you are getting used to a character or, for that matter, a generation of characters, suddenly so much time has gone by that you're now dealing with a whole new group of people, a new war, new relationships and the only things that give the book any continuity at all are Macondo and Ursula and the family names which repeat and add to the confusion.
If you want magical realism, and I know this is blasphemous, especially for someone who minored in Spanish, I'd say read Salman Rushdie or, if you really want Spanish, Borges or Carlos Fuentes. They represent the genre better. Maybe my opinion will change after I revisit Cien Años in English sometime in the future, but for now I really don't have much of a desire to do that at least not for the next 100 years or so. Oh yes I did.
après avoir vu la hype autour de ce livre et étant une amoureuse du réalisme magique j'avais vraiment hâte de commencer ma lecture.
ce fut une aventure beaucoup trop confuse, que je me dois donc d'arrêter.
life's too short to force myself to finish books i'm clearly not enjoying reading.
a big let down.
The writer, of course, is by all means, outstanding and I loved the story. But this is not a story that makes you jump out of your chair. It feels like he was trying to tell a story about loneliness and all the ways you can be in solitude.
It feels far-fetched sometimes.
Overall I think this book is great. Maybe I like other genres or other writing styles better.
One of the worst books I've come across in recent years. Very boring, very crazy, very complicated, very unhinged. Not for me at all. Might have received awards and star ratings, but I found it unbelievably tiring. I read a comment somewhere that the author was “high” while writing this and I must say I do not disagree.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is unarguably Marquez's most popular and successful book.
After reading this I can see why, his writing has the usual poetic melancholic elements to it and he knows how to conclude a book.
(The ending made this book jump from a 1-star to easily a 2.5-star book.)
Now, after acknowledging the elements I do appreciate, let me point out the ones that made this book tedious and unbearable at times.
The narration meanders a lot, by the time you are actually invested in a character, they are cut out from the book.
While its writing is beautiful, it tends to become overindulgent midway because the subplots are half-baked.
Overall, I prefer Love in the Time of Cholera over this as that book has both beautiful writing and good plot (well, lack of roaming around aimlessly).
Quedé trastornada con ese gran final, creo que el libro valió la pena sólo por las últimas 4 páginas. Aunque sentía que cuando lo leía era como entrar en Macondo, en cuanto separa mis ojos de las palabras se me olvidaba por qué estaba leyendo tan inmersa y me era complicado volver a sumergirme. Fuera del incesto, la pedofilia y el maltrato constante hacia toda figura viva (en especial femeninas) es un gran libro para pasar el día, no se hace una lectura pesada, no se siente denso y se puede considerar una gran obra aunque el mensaje sea desolador.
Este libro es un must, lectura muy disfrutable y enriquecedora. La calidad de escritura de Gabriel García Márquez me ha cautivado desde la primera página. Recomendado.
Contains spoilers
J'hésite beaucoup sur ce livre (lu dans le cadre d'un book club). Je crois que je m'attendais plus à une histoire qu'à une fresque familiale dans un premier temps. J'ai eu un peu de mal arrivé au dernier tiers, rattrapé par contre par une fin magnifique. J'y ai trouvé de très beaux moments plein de poésie, j'ai eu beaucoup de mal avec certains moments comme l'inceste et la pédophilie dans certaines relations.
L'atmosphère était si humide que les poissons auraient pu entrer par les portes et sortir par les fenêtres, naviguant dans les airs d'une pièce à l'autre.
Racconto piacevole. Il tempo che si cristallizza e torna. 100 anni di vita avventurosa e magica. Complicato per il gran numero di personaggi. 7
Y sí
"...y que todo lo escrito en ellos era irrepetible desde siempre y para siempre, porque las estirpes condenadas a cien años de soledad no tenían una segunda oportunidad sobre la tierra."
Qué pedazo de final.
Easily one of the best books I've read. Already have my Spanish copy to reread this summer. If you like generational stories, biblical stories, delusional stories, or Latin American stories, then this is the novel for you.
Läste hälften men tappade intresset. Ingenting händer och allt som händer är samma sak
