From the Bookshelf of Never too Late to Read Classics…

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez

Start date: August 1, 2022

Finish date: August 31, 2022

Discussion: Science Fiction and Fantasy

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Apr 23, 2020 midnightfaerie rated it did not like it

Shelves: literature, classics, rory-gilmore, magical-realism

Wow. I am seriously at a loss for words. I was really looking forward to this book and am sitting here flabbergasted. Just wow. Ok, deep breath, here we go.

As I began to read this book I was instantly confused as hell. Things seemed real but then were not real at all and couldn't be. So I looked up how this book was classified and to my astonishment learned about a new genre I had never heard of called "magical realism". Really? Magical realism? Why yes, it's realistic and magical. To say the le Wow. I am seriously at a loss for words. I was really looking forward to this book and am sitting here flabbergasted. Just wow. Ok, deep breath, here we go.

As I began to read this book I was instantly confused as hell. Things seemed real but then were not real at all and couldn't be. So I looked up how this book was classified and to my astonishment learned about a new genre I had never heard of called "magical realism". Really? Magical realism? Why yes, it's realistic and magical. To say the least I had a very hard time wrapping my head around this concept. Scenes like when the priest ate chocolate and levitated, left me wondering if this book would follow any rules where literature was concerned. And when I realized there were other authors who wrote this way that were on my classical "to read" list, I got scared. Terrified, really. I don't know if I could take another book like this. I love reading classics and what others deem are classics, hoping to find beautiful new ways to fall in love with language, but this book did NOT do this for me. I can usually find something redeemable in classic literature even if I don't like it, but this novel just left me bereft.

Garcia Marquez also jumps all over in time. Instead of following the usual literal idea of time, plots usually take, he decides to describe events as they're happening now and in the future and in the past all at the same time. Fans have said that this undermines the idea that literal narratives are the only one that makes sense, implying that authors have the right to make any narratives they chose in any fashion, and this is not only a wonderful way of writing but that they indeed make sense. I have to disagree. Trying to figure out where the story was, or rather where it had been at the end that was described in the beginning made my head hurt and was not at all enjoyable. There's a reason we have predefined formats in literature. Don't get me wrong, feel free to break rules, as long as they still do the story justice, which this did not. I could barely concentrate on the story because I was so busy trying to figure out where in the story I was. And let's not even get started on the characters and how close their names are. I had to make a list to keep them all straight. Of course, I could just be an idiot with a fallible memory and feel free to argue this point.

I think he's trying to get to the point that the past is recorded by people, so recording how it is perceived by said people is just as important as the actual facts. At least this is one of the points he's trying to make. But I don't feel like he made a good argument of it. I could go off on a tangent about solitude as well, but honestly, I just don't have the energy. I'm exhausted from reading this book. I don't want to discount magical realism as a whole, but I have to be honest and say it will be awhile before I pick up a book off my list that has that description tied to it. ...more

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