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egmamaril's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Death, Gun violence, and Death of parent
Moderate: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Incest, Infidelity, Racial slurs, and Racism
sofipitch's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
This is a beautifully written book. It's also very political. It has the same themes of colonialism, political wars, traditional/catholic views vs modern lifestyles, and family that surround a lot of Latin american works. I read "The House of the Spirits" and I can see how Garcia Marquez influenced Allende. The only reason this isn't getting 5 stars is for the depictions of sex, in a lot of scenes the women don't want to and are more or less raped only to "fall in love/have sex all the time" with the man, it happens multiple times and isn't clearly condemned by the text which is, big yikes.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Confinement, Death, Gun violence, Incest, Infidelity, Rape, Terminal illness, Violence, Mass/school shootings, Abandonment, and Alcohol
Moderate: Mental illness and Excrement
Minor: Antisemitism and Abortion
elizlizabeth's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This is the story of entire generations of a family, up to the moment they settle in a new land and 'til the bloodline's demise. The Buendía family is definitely something, but I wouldn't say they're a role model (nor does the author portray them as such). Misfortune after misfortune happens to them and it can feel quite fatalist at times, a sort of Colombian Lemony Snicket, but with more incest. There's a lot of characters and the fact that they're named the same had me checking the Family Tree every five pages and even then I'm sure I attributed a plot point to the wrong Aureliano -which I guess is a clever way to force you to immerse in the story and be as lost as all the other Buendías.
In the end that's what this is, a clever book, marvelously crafted with exquisite prose, but deeply disturbing and depressing. I do not agree with GGM's worldview here and the whole Oedipus Complex trope seemed to point at Shakespearean levels of tragedy, but where my man Willy didn't take himself too seriously, GGM does this sad boi act which made me dislike his books in the first place. Appreciate the art, but won't be re-reading it soon, nor recommending it to nobody.
In the end that's what this is, a clever book, marvelously crafted with exquisite prose, but deeply disturbing and depressing. I do not agree with GGM's worldview here and the whole Oedipus Complex trope seemed to point at Shakespearean levels of tragedy, but where my man Willy didn't take himself too seriously, GGM does this sad boi act which made me dislike his books in the first place. Appreciate the art, but won't be re-reading it soon, nor recommending it to nobody.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Genocide, Gun violence, Incest, Miscarriage, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, and Blood
Moderate: Ableism, Body horror, Death, Torture, Police brutality, Dementia, Trafficking, and Death of parent
Minor: Confinement, Misogyny, and Religious bigotry
savagemoose's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I really liked the magical realism and the pace of the book, but the incest and pedophilia and most of the sexual content was hard to read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest, Pedophilia, and Sexual content
Moderate: Child death, Gun violence, and Sexual assault
catapocalypse's review against another edition
challenging
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
There is so, so much to say about this book.
First, I can't believe how seldom its humor is brought up by others! There's a lot of focus placed on the heavy, cynical, serious elements, but there's also many absurd and silly and tongue-in-cheek and clever elements!
Even while mixing all those things, García Márquez subtly shifts the feel of the narrative as it progresses. Mind, this is an entirely character-driven story, with little to no real plot beyond the lifespan of the Buendía family and their town of Macondo. Folks who prefer plot-driven stories may find this book incredibly boring! But as time passes, the family, town, and narrative itself seem to shift and mature in a way. The beginnings of all three feature many fantastic elements. There are flights of fancy viewed with an almost childlike wonder. Time feels more sprawling.
But as things progress, they become more grounded in reality (though never entirely), and more serious events and concerns pop up. The little town of Macondo starts without even a mayor, but gradually sees Colonel Aureliano Buendía's war, the influence of foreign colonizing powers, and the high tension of the banana company worker strikes. Time gradually speeds up to the hurricane pace of the ending.
Across this lifespan of the Buendía family and Macondo, there's a lot going on, and García Márquez brilliantly connects all of it together. Even fanciful elements are not careless. I feel it has high reread value, and might even consider an immediate reread if I didn't have so much else to get to right now.
I do have some warnings. While the narrative is fairly linear in time, there are some overlapping points where events are retraced when the focus has moved between characters. This isn't so bad, so long as you can keep track of the many similarly-named ones. I recommend an edition that provides a family tree, like that from Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
There are also many Content Warnings, some rather significant, so please check out those listed for the book on its entry!
The prevalence of some of this, especially of the incest and problematic relationships between adults and minors, will definitely turn off some readers, which is valid! I was conflicted on its inclusion the entire way through, but ultimately, I think it ties into the presentation of the Buendía family as being deeply flawed. Let's face it, Úrsula was probably right about everything all along.
I'm sure there are even further layers I'm not fathoming. I do think that this book fully deserves its status as a classic, and I will absolutely read more Gabriel García Márquez.
First, I can't believe how seldom its humor is brought up by others! There's a lot of focus placed on the heavy, cynical, serious elements, but there's also many absurd and silly and tongue-in-cheek and clever elements!
Even while mixing all those things, García Márquez subtly shifts the feel of the narrative as it progresses. Mind, this is an entirely character-driven story, with little to no real plot beyond the lifespan of the Buendía family and their town of Macondo. Folks who prefer plot-driven stories may find this book incredibly boring! But as time passes, the family, town, and narrative itself seem to shift and mature in a way. The beginnings of all three feature many fantastic elements. There are flights of fancy viewed with an almost childlike wonder. Time feels more sprawling.
But as things progress, they become more grounded in reality (though never entirely), and more serious events and concerns pop up. The little town of Macondo starts without even a mayor, but gradually sees Colonel Aureliano Buendía's war, the influence of foreign colonizing powers, and the high tension of the banana company worker strikes. Time gradually speeds up to the hurricane pace of the ending.
Across this lifespan of the Buendía family and Macondo, there's a lot going on, and García Márquez brilliantly connects all of it together. Even fanciful elements are not careless. I feel it has high reread value, and might even consider an immediate reread if I didn't have so much else to get to right now.
I do have some warnings. While the narrative is fairly linear in time, there are some overlapping points where events are retraced when the focus has moved between characters. This isn't so bad, so long as you can keep track of the many similarly-named ones. I recommend an edition that provides a family tree, like that from Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
There are also many Content Warnings, some rather significant, so please check out those listed for the book on its entry!
The prevalence of some of this, especially of the incest and problematic relationships between adults and minors, will definitely turn off some readers, which is valid! I was conflicted on its inclusion the entire way through, but ultimately, I think it ties into the presentation of the Buendía family as being deeply flawed. Let's face it, Úrsula was probably right about everything all along.
I'm sure there are even further layers I'm not fathoming. I do think that this book fully deserves its status as a classic, and I will absolutely read more Gabriel García Márquez.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Eating disorder, Gun violence, Incest, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Pedophilia, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Violence, Dementia, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Suicide attempt, and Murder
Moderate: Bullying, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Blood, Medical content, Trafficking, and Death of parent
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Homophobia, Vomit, and Cannibalism
roniboi's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
I don't know if this book was written to make whole sense. I like to think it wasn't. There are definitely things to be understood and others to let go of. It's just so o
Content Warnings
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Death, Gun violence, Incest, Pedophilia, Rape, Violence, Police brutality, and Murder
Moderate: Confinement, Infidelity, Sexual content, and Grief
Minor: Self harm and Suicide
sherbertwells's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I cannot pick out a single sentence or paragraph to quote from One Hundred Years of Solitude, the famous novel by Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, because presenting such a small fragment of the text would erase its magic. The story’s individual episodes, which chronicle the rise and fall of the Buendía family in the fictional Colombian town of Macondo, are iconic in their own right. But reviews like mine (and John Green’s, which encouraged me to read this book) can’t capture its appeal in full. Nevertheless, it is a wonderful and terrible (that is, terror-inspiring) story that wasn’t my favorite book but might become yours.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a classic today because its story is gorgeously told. Translator Gregory Rabassa does a great job presenting the original Spanish sentences in clear-but-whimsical English, but Márquez deserves most of the credit. Every description or phrase is precise and luscious, from riverstones “like prehistoric eggs” to wind “full of voices from the past...murmurs of ancient geraniums, sights of disenchantment that preceded the most tenacious nostalgia” (1, 415). Between its covers I encountered the names for a thousand conditions that I had experienced but only now recognized in the narratives of fictional characters.
Some of those characters are pretty neat. Since One Hundred Years of Solitude takes place over a century, individual Buendías frequently step into out out of the spotlight, appearing just often enough to perpetuate the family curse in their own unique way. While most female characters conform to the patriarchal attitudes of the 19th- and 20th century—Fernanda and Petra Cotes in particular embody the worst parts of the virgin-whore dichotomy—Úrsula, the matriarch, is a real badass. She’s tenacious. While she isn’t a soldier or a scholar like her male relatives, she saves their lives several times with her stubbornness and knowledge of medicine, and without her influence the family fortunes really start to go downhill. The Roma scholar Melquiades and the second-to-last Aureliano are also neat, since their pursuit of knowledge frames the story. But everyone else is a bit of a disaster.
Stories with horrible, ambiguously-framed characters can sometimes be shocking or cathartic, but the rape, pedophilia and incest in this book occur so casually that I’m not even sure they happened. For example, Remedios Moscote marries Colonel Aureliano Buendía a month after getting her first period but “before getting over the habits of her childhood” (84). Amaranta Buendía sexually abuses two of her underage nephews, and one looks back on the experience with longing! Meanwhile, the first encounter of Amaranta Úrsula and Aureliano is an initially-nonconsensual “battle to the death” (396). If all three of these affairs weren’t framed as dramatic romances, perhaps they would merely be manifestations of the screwed-up Buendía family dynamic. As is, I feel like José Arcadio Segundo after a particularly spoiler-y incident: That just happened, didn’t it? It was awful, wasn’t it? Am I supposed to see the ramifications of abuse in the same way I see the plague of insomnia or the Assumption of Remedios the Beauty, as normal parts of life in Macondo?
Some people enjoy One Hundred Years of Solitude’s glorious moral ambiguity, and I suspect most of my disdain for it is merely a matter of taste. So is my ambivalence to the novel’s other affairs. Before reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, I had no idea how much of the story was about sex. It’s the foundation for approximately 90% of the romances and 65% of the plot points, and while some amount of romantic shenanigans is par for the course in a family saga, it feels like every time a character is about to learn something or change history they get distracted by an attractive stranger/villager/relative! Maybe it’s a Buendía thing. It’s just not mine.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a classic novel of magnificent quality. My conflicted reaction to the story isn’t ambivalence, but a mixture of great love and mild personal dislike. Like the tangled Buendía family tree, the parts I love depend on the parts I don’t, and even now I can’t split them up.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Incest, Pedophilia, Sexual content, and Mass/school shootings
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Stalking, Suicide attempt, and Death of parent
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Homophobia, Trafficking, and Abortion
keenanmaree's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Eating disorder, Incest, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Rape, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, and Dementia
Moderate: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Eating disorder, Gun violence, Sexism, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Blood, and Police brutality
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Excrement, and Dementia