One Hundred Years of Solitude

Some sad news was reported this week, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is no longer writing due to dementia. I read One Hundred Years of Solitude during my Peace Corps service and I feel in love with Garcia Marquez and magical realism.

Magical realism blends magical elements with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of thought. What I love about this type of writing is that it makes me feel like a little kid again. I get to imagine these magical things in the context of real life. I love that every person I talk to about the book has a different vision of how all of these things happen and how they look.

One Hundred Years of Solitude follows several generations of the Buendías family, founders of the fictional Latin America town of Macondo. The book follows the family as the town changes and grows. For years, the town was isolated from outsiders, except for gypsies who peddle “technologies” such as ice and telescopes. It then gains fame as the birthplace of the rebel leader during a civil war. The next generation faces the invasion of American banana plantation owners. And the final generation, because of the exposure to the outside world, eventually finds themselves alienated and doomed to a solitary ending.

García Márquez covers almost a century in the book. He describes are the major turning points in the lives of the Buendías: births, deaths, marriages, love affairs. Some of the Buendía men are wild and sexually rapacious, frequenting brothels and taking lovers. Others are quiet and solitary, preferring to shut themselves up in their rooms. The women, too, range from the outrageously outgoing, like Meme, to the prim and proper Fernanda del Carpio.

A sense of the family’s destiny for greatness remains alive in its tenacious matriarch, Ursula Iguarán, and she works to keep the family together despite its differences. But for the Buendía family, as for the entire village of Macondo, the forces of modernity are devastating.

Although I loved this book, I know plenty of people who hated this book. It is definitely a style of writing that you either love or hate. I fell in love with magical realism right away but for others it is an acquired taste. If you don’t like this book, don’t give up, try a book by Isabella Allende before you really decide if you love it or hate it.