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.
