The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez - 4 stars (Subdue)

[Joy D]

The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez - 4* - My Review

This book captures the essence of what life is like in an unnamed Caribbean country living under a dictatorship. In this case it is a dictator that has been in power for over a hundred years and has died twice. It is not a book to read for plot. It is written in the author’s long paragraphs of flowing prose with many commas, few periods, and embedded conversations. It features magical realism, a stylistic choice commonly employed by García Márquez. The timeline switches regularly between the present when the dictator's body is found (which happens at the beginning), and the past when he was in power. He becomes increasingly isolated and detached from reality. It takes time to get used to the style, but after a while it becomes almost mesmerizing. It reads like a series of dream sequences where the reader gets to gist of the message through its rhythmic prose. Reading this book is not an easy task, but in the end, I found it worthwhile. There seems to be no end to dictators in our world, and the types of abuses of power, narcissism, and mendacity discussed in this book recur with unfortunate frequency.