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Nov 26, 2014 Bogdan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mundus-novus

I am again impressed by the writing techniques of Gabriel Garcia Marques, even though I don't necessary like his stories that don't focus too much on the narrative flow. These kind of books, flow of consciousness type with some magical realism, for me were interesting the first time I come across one. Now, I keep hoping after each page I turn that the actual story would start.

The premise is comprised of the main themes explored: death, solitude and social conformism. Though there are some mentio I am again impressed by the writing techniques of Gabriel Garcia Marques, even though I don't necessary like his stories that don't focus too much on the narrative flow. These kind of books, flow of consciousness type with some magical realism, for me were interesting the first time I come across one. Now, I keep hoping after each page I turn that the actual story would start.

The premise is comprised of the main themes explored: death, solitude and social conformism. Though there are some mentions to a war, I believe it is not discussed in such detail to be considered part of the premise. Regarding what I call social conformism, I refer to the fact that Macondo villagers are like a collective character. And these villagers try to impose their own values and attitudes to anyone that lives in the respective place, including the main characters. Interesting with several ways of interpret it, but it lacks the consistency of a single clear message proven by the story. I'll give then a 4 for premise.

Regarding the form, I admit GGM is a great writer. He knows and applies very well many literary devices. And he uses them in such a way that they seem natural for the respective story. The only thing I did not liked is that this novella focus was literary style rather than the story itself. Overall, I'll give it with a 4 for form.

In terms of originality, there are many other novels on those topic, but none, as far as I can tell, none that addressed them this way. So I will give it another 4 for the level of originality.

On the characters there are just a couple characters which allowed GGM to focus on them greatly. Thus the three narrators, the patriarch (retired colonel), his daughter and the colonel's nephew, are very well detailed. And through their interior monologue we learn a lot about the strange doctor that committed suicide. A novel where the focus is on characters, well made characters, cannot receive from me anything else than a the maximum, meaning 5.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, the novel is very complex and has a lot of messages. It is also quite difficult to understand it. For me, and I am not necessarily a casual reader, it was required to read about 2/3 before I managed to understand something out of it. Probably it was very hard to write as well. Thus, I will rate it then with a 5 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility, I did not noticed too many traces of magic, even though it is actually labeled as magical realism. I agree that time is a little bit awkward, but this is nothing out of ordinary. Without this, the novel is fairly consistent with itself. My rating for credibility is then 4.

The last criteria is edition. It is an elegant paperback edition with nice covers. The translation is also good, as far as I can tell. So I'll give it a 5.

To summarize, this was an interesting book, not necessarily my genre, but clearly a literary masterpiece. All in all, my final rating for it is 4.43, which I will round it to 4 on Goodreads system.


+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 4.43 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+

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Apr 11, 2019 Gary Dale marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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