One Hundred Years of Solitude (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Epub)

Description

One of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude remains a dazzling and original achievement by the masterful Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendiá family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad and alive with unforgettable men and women—brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul—this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.

User’s Reviews

Review “One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. It takes up not long after Genesis left off and carries through to the air age, reporting on everything that happened in between with more lucidity, wit, wisdom, and poetry that is expected from 100 years of novelists, let alone one man. . . . Mr. García Márquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound, meaningful, and meaningless in life.” — William Kennedy, New York Times Book Review“More lucidity, wit, wisdom, and poetry than is expected from 100 years of novelists, let alone one man.” — Washington Post Book World“At 50 years old, García Márquez’s masterpiece is as important as ever. . . To experience a towering work like One Hundred Years of Solitude is to be reminded of the humility we should all feel when trying to assert what is true and what is false.” — LitHub”An irresistible work of storytelling, mixing the magic of the fairy tale, the realistic detail of the domestic novel and the breadth of the family saga.” — New York Times“One Hundred Years of Solitude is substantive and substantial, and its prose precise for the simple reason that its sentences are too exquisite to be inessential. It is a novel on which is bestowed the laurels usually awarded to great works of frugal prose. Yet its genius is in the operatic telling.” — The Independent“One Hundred Years of Solitude offers plenty of reflections on loneliness and the passing of time. It can also be seen as a caustic commentary on the evils of war, or a warm appreciation of familial bonds. García Márquez has urgent things to say that still feel close to home, 50 years after the book was first published.” — The Guardian“One of the seminal works of 20th century Latin American fiction, it is a classic.” — Variety“Fecund, savage, irresistible. . . . In all their loves, madness, and wars, their alliances, compromises, dreams and deaths…the characters rear up large and rippling with life against the green pressure of nature itself.” — Paul West, Book World

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

this is a stunning work, with a translation that is worthy of the author. i was an english teacher and a colleague had dual citizenship with colombia and she read both versions of this work and couldn’t decide between the two. i’ve only read the english translation, but even the translation puts it in the top tier of all the novels i’ve read. that’s good news and bad news maybe. that means that the work is easily available to english-speakers, but that doesn’t make it any easier to read as a work of literature. my guess is that it can be read on several levels at once, but i’ve never talked to anyone about the novel who wasn’t a lit major. this work is so different and so interesting, you should try reading it no matter what your school experience with literature has been.

Confusing? Lengthy? Lot’s of characters, all with practically the same name? Yes, but all for an intended purpose. I picked up this book for an AP Lit project and browsed through some of the reviews to see just what I was about to read. There were plenty of “oh, this is so confusing” and “there are just too many of the same names” reviews. But there were also the reviews that focused on the enriching side of the book. The side that people often overlook. So I figured I would give it a try. It is not a book I would normally have picked up, but it soon surprised me. I remember flipping to the first page and reading the very first line of the book: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” Already I was drawn in. There was so much going on in that first line, the rest of the book just had to be interesting too. And it didn’t fail. The book goes through generations of families as they tell their story over time. There is no set protagonist, which bothered me at first, but then I became comfortable with it as I continued reading. Throughout the book you discover your favorite characters with their quirky personalities. The Buendia family is full of weird adventures and mystical encounters. From the gypsies to the invention of ice, the book jumps around from sentence to sentence illustrating the personality of this family simply in syntax. There is love, civil war, death, magic, and redemption in it’s many pages. Many reviews had issues with the numerous similar names and found the book simply confusing. But if you were reading the book with a close eye, you realize that it was all for a reason. It was written almost “as if the world were repeating itself.” And as you struggle to read, “time put things in their place.” Yes, these are quotes from the book itself and are so direct to the theme and overall meaning that they seem to be overlooked. The book’s confusing almost repetitive nature was to illustrate a grand motif. The circular motif. How everything comes around in time. That fate is such a huge force in everything that happens. Overall, I would give this book 4 stars. That seems low for all the good things I had to say about it, but in the end I rate it lower than 5 stars simply because I struggled to relate with it. It was so different from the books I normally read that it became hard to really be drawn into it. I did love however the circle motif and how everything wraps up just as it should. Sure, all of the crazy adventures and writing style was interesting and unique, but it didn’t capture me personally as well as it may have captured someone else. If I were to read this again (or another book by Marquez), however, I believe that I would feel more comfortable with the writing style and mystic side of the culture and I would relate to it better. I would suggest this book to someone who wants to try and read something different from a lot of other “mainstream” books out there.

One Hundred Years of Solitude really isn’t as difficult or confusing as some reviews make it seem. People make it seem like it’s impossible to get through so many repeating names, but even when the characters share a name, almost every single character (until the last generation–and by that point the first characters are long gone so that it wasn’t really confusing) has a unique name. How is that confusing? And anyway, it doesn’t take too many chapters or a genius to figure out they all share the same names for a reason. Also, I must say, if you don’t like the first 50-100 pages, you probably aren’t going to like the rest of the book. It stays like that… Plus, the first Jose Arcadio Buendia is one of the more entertaining characters in the book, in my opinion. But, I think Aureliano Segundo and Remedios The Beauty were the highlights in this book. I was cracking up throughout their scenes.Although I feel I missed a lot about what was going on symbolically whilst reading (mostly a lot of the religious stuff), I still found this book to be extremely enjoyable. It’s inspiring and surreal, whimsical, funny and sad–and it all causes a person to feel very introspective, because it blends so many aspects of what makes up a person’s life. I looked up some of the themes and motifs after reading to make sure I caught everything, and I prefer many of my own interpretations. And I think Gabriel Garcia Marquez meant to write it in a way that was a more personal experience. At the end notes, he mentions in an interview how he wanted to capture the way an abuela tells stories to her grandchildren– and I got that vibe the whole time. And a lot of times, the surreal in crazy old latin american stories is what makes you remember the life lessons behind the story. And I feel like that’s what happened here.But again, I feel like most people I know wouldn’t like this book, and I can see where they’re coming from. It definitely isn’t for everyone. And I must stress that that’s not coming from a pretentious place. His writing style will be frustrating to many readers I’d presume, because it’s really just incredibly unique. But, if you can get past the style (long paragraphs, little fluctuation in narration, mentioning things that haven’t really happened yet, or no main protagonist… etc) and the repetition of names, it really isn’t super complicated or anything.It isn’t perfect, but It’s great. And even though I started this review planning to give it four stars, after writing it–I think it’s an important enough, and intricately weaved enough, and a unique enough a piece to warrant a 5-star from this fella.

I can report that I persevered and finished reading this book. I would like to report that I enjoyed it but didn’t. I found some of the passages interesting, but struggled with the run-on sentences and convoluted stream-of-consciousness regurgitation. I don’t like to criticize another writer’s art but couldn’t restrain myself on this one. I told a friend about this book, and he asked, “Who determines good literature and who decides on a Nobel prize for it?” I didn’t have a good answer. I think Mark Twain had it right, “It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.”

It has to be me. I accept that. I understand that the author won the Nobel Prize. I have read the glowing praise this book has received. And I am utterly at a loss. Boring, full of sexual deviance (the sad kind), everyone has the same name, the magic elements feel like something a drunk grandfather would make up (especially if he wasn’t very creative). I gave up after a hundred pages. This book is so useless it won’t even make good toilet paper for the outhouse.

I am by no means a literary whiz, but I can certainly ascertain the deeper meaning of a piece of literature if it’s there. With this novel, I couldn’t discern a single bit of wisdom other than that life is long, lonely, and strange. Perhaps this particular translation is deficient? I found the prose to be clunky and cumbersome, almost too lofty for its own good, as if it’s trying way too hard to be original.I was intrigued by the description of the themes and the use of magical realism, but sadly both elements came up far short of the hype. I got three quarters of the way through it and gave up because I found myself either bored out of my skull or constantly thinking about anything else to keep myself from falling asleep. To be fair, when I asked a friend about this book he recommended other works by the author, and I should have listened, but unfortunately because of how utterly unimpressed I was with this work, I’ll likely not take up another by the author.There are so many other great magical realism books out there with much better developed plots (The Third Policeman, The Blue Flowers, Still Life With Woodpecker, anything by Vonnegut) that this just seems unimpressive by comparison. I gave it two stars because I did laugh a couple of times, but at no point did I think that I was learning anything valuable about the human experience which I would hope to absorb into my own personal world view.

I first read One Hundred Years of Solitude in my Latin American Literature course and I’ve been hooked on Gabriel Garcia Marquez ever since. The plot and timeline move quickly and fold in on themselves, making each page interesting, but a little tough to chew on. This is not a light read. If you blink you’ll miss something. It’s definitely one of my favorite books and I’ll read it time and time again. This book is the pinnacle of magical realism.

This book is often discussed as a must read, and I have tried that twice. This second time I made it several chapters in. Trudging ever more mindlessly like being 14,000 steps into a too hot desert hike without water. It is not unlike listening to an uncle whose dementia has progressed, but still believes he is telling great stories at his former favorite bar. Each time you think he has stopped, something else even deeper in the mire omits from his mouth. For a chapter or two, the magical style is charming, and if you have nothing to do but cut the lawn or read another chapter in this book, then by all means, read another chapter. But I did not finish, so don’t judge by me. There must be something nearer the end that makes one have that “aha!” or “eureka!” moment. The one where you say, whew, I was afraid that was several hours of my life I would never get back, but then I discovered it was actually magnificent!

It’s like reading a long list of genealogy with some added information: and then this happened and then that and then they died and then this and then that and then THEY died, and and and. Oh who cares already!!! I just could not wait to be done with it!!! Now that I am finished and can and will forget it ever happened, I can go back into the bliss of reading the masterpiece War and Peace by Tolstoy. Now THAT is an amazing book!!!!!!!! I love every single word of every single line of it! It’s awesome. My opinion on this book is apparently not trending here which is apparent by the votes of others but I shall just be the outlier who suggests that you save yourself the exasperation and read something else!

Endless rambling with nearly no paragraph breaks. Goes from subject to subject, character to character with little structure or reason. Occasionally there’s some artful prose, but most is just incessant rolling stories of incest and debauchery. Gave me the impression that Marquez ‘s Columbia and personal life was just full of similar debauchery. Too many references to unapologetic pedophilia in all of his books also gives the impression he participated in it. I don’t know how this type of work deserves the highest literary prize in the world. Speaks more about the quality of the prize than making me believe this work is something to look up to.

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