One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel García Márquez

This book should be re-named to "100 years to read". It seemed like it took that long for me to read it, or at least really get into it. I swear it was 100-200 pages before I was comfortable with he style of writing. It is a Magical Surrealism genre that this is written in. It is fiction, but it is also a bit mystical and has a lot of foreshadowing in the book. It takes a while to get used to this in the novel.
It is a good book, I will admit that. It is also a book that people should read to get a good perspective from.

It is set in a fictitious small town in northern Columbia and follows a family for 100 years in that small town, through their many generations. It is fun to follow all the characters through their lives and in the book, however if you read this, be sure, and I mean be very sure you have a copy of the family tree in the front pages of the book. I really, really would have tossed this book aside if it had not been for that family tree to follow along. I turned to it every 10 pages or so to be sure I knew who this paragraph or chapter was about, or who was being introduced. The names of the characters are very similar throughout the book, so without this guide it would be even more confusing to read.

The book somewhat reminds me of John Steinbeck's "East of Eden" although this was written in Spanish, and the setting is in South America. It is a little reminiscent of that novel in some ways. All be it, I love East of Eden 10 times more!

I would definitely recommend this to read, but just beware of what you are getting into before you start it. It is not something you just pick up to amuse yourself, but it is a read to really READ. It is perfect for a high school literature class to read, and discuss and pick apart. There are many dimensions of this book, that you can delve into and discuss, and write many term papers about, it is quite a book!

I do also have to wonder what the translation lost in this book. Perhaps that may have been some of the difficulty in making this book a bit challenging, It would be great to be fluent in Spanish, and read the author's original text.