Reviews with content warning for Murder - One Hundred Years of Solitude

What the hell did I just read? Not only does this book not have any plot whatsoever, but it also seamlessly normalizes sexism, violence, cheating, incest, animal abuse, child abuse and pedophilia. And is there even a single likeable character in the whole story? In my opinion they’re all shamelessly terrible people.

Its only merit is that it is well written, but that can’t save it from me giving it 1 star.

Content Warnings

bluejayreads's review against another edition

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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

4.75

I mainly picked this up because I put it on hold at the library during a (very brief) classics-reading kick earlier this year and promptly forgot about it. When it came available, I figured I might as well read it.

This story chronicles six-ish generations of the Buendía family and the small town of Macondo. Family heads José Arcadio and Úrsula, along with a group of unrelated other people, take a long trek into the jungle and build a town. Their family grows, their children have children of their own, and the Buendía family gets bigger – in number, in wealth, in stature in the town. Times change, war happens, the town becomes less isolated, new scientific inventions happen, the family begins to disperse away from the town. The town of Macondo rises, and then falls, with the Buendía family.

This is a weird book, but from my limited experience with magical realism, this is weird in ways consistent with the genre. It’s like the real world, but a little to the left. Alchemy is a thing that works, there’s a side character who may be immortal or may be already dead, one character gets medical treatment from psychic doctors who are thousands of miles away, a character gets taken up into heaven, and nobody views this as at all out of the ordinary. In fact, magnifying glasses and turning metal into gold are treated with equal seriousness and excitement, like the ability to put the right ingredients into a pot and turn them into gold is a neat scientific advancement like curving glass to make things bigger.

The thing that surprised me the most about this book is that for all its century-spanning scale and magical realism bizarreness, it’s remarkably human. None of these characters are great people, but they’re all doing their best in their circumstances. I found something relatable in every character – in Úrsula’s resourcefulness in keeping the family functional; in José Arcadio’s desire to learn all about cool new things; in Fernanda’s rigid adherence to rules; in Amaranta Úrsula’s desire to leave the small town where she grew up and grow in the wider world; in Remedios the Beauty’s … well, let’s be honest, Remedios the Beauty was who I wish I could be. There are six generations of Buendías, each of whom love and lose, grow and die, succeed, fail, make mistakes, and ultimately just are in all their messy glory. It sounds pretentious to say this book is about the human condition, but it kind of is.

My biggest struggle was keeping the characters straight. Normally I would blame this on the audiobook format, and it is what caused my difficulty remembering Arcadio and Aureliano were two different characters. But the book itself doesn’t make it easy on me, either. This family reuses names a lot – there are three José Arcadios (and one just Arcadio), three Remedioses, and twenty-two Aurelianos (although to be fair, only four of them actually have major roles). There are also 32 biological relatives and 8 spouses stretching across the century this book covers, not to mention characters who aren’t part of the Buendía family. At some point, I felt like I needed to give them numbers to tell them apart.

I didn’t think I was much for the “sweeping family saga” type of book, but if they’re anything like this, I may have to reconsider. I didn’t get particularly attached to any one character (unless you count Remedios the Beauty, who I mainly loved because she’s #goals), but I enjoyed seeing the high-level view of the rise and fall, fortunes and misfortunes of the Buendías. One Hundred Years of Solitude is, much to my surprise, an enjoyable and remarkably relatable book.

Content Warnings

ana610615's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
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

pandabulous's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

Content Warnings

naomikleber's review against another edition

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challenging reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

everything i’ve heard about this book has been that it’s the “greatest literary work of all time” or other extreme raves on the genius of the story. i didn’t hate the book, but i definitely didn’t get why people rave over it so much. it honestly didn’t really make sense to me, and even though my lit teacher says that being confused is just part of the experience of reading the book, i tend to not really enjoy a story when i really have no idea what’s going on and who is who. there was also a lot in the book that was just weird, or frankly wrong. for example, there was a lot of incest, which just made me kind of uncomfortable. furthermore, i thought this story would have a lot to do with colonization and how europeans destroyed this town, but it didn’t really seem to be about that. it was just a very drawn out, confusing story that i didn’t understand the purpose of. maybe if it was clearer what the meaning is i would have enjoyed it more.

Content Warnings

nachtvlucht's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

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