Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

41 reviews

2treads's review against another edition

challenging sad 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? No

4.0

...because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

The fact that this book's main focus is only on the male offspring of Jose Arcadio Buendía is irksome, although she does get a chapter that outlines her decline 😤. Especially when Ursula, the matriarch, has gone above and beyond in ensuring that the family is provided for. She is also clever and aware, and is not afraid to put herself forward to defend her children and grandchildren. She deserved chapters to focus on all she did and endured. 

This obsession that Marquez has with showing men and their sexual proclivities is alarming, and as my husband says, it could very well be he means it in a tongue-in-cheek, darkly humorous manner for affect. I remain unconvinced.

However, what is undeniable is that he is a writer that has complete control over how this expansive yet contained story unfolds, and even as it may seem like mindless wading for some readers, there will be others that will get swept along for what is a captivating, awesome, disturbing tale of a family and their tragic legacy.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Incest

Moderate: Gun violence, Sexual content, Infidelity, Pregnancy, Mental illness, Mass/school shootings, and Death

borninexile's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Incest, War, Pedophilia, Grief, and Infidelity

Moderate: Colonisation, Confinement, Sexism, Injury/Injury detail, Genocide, Dementia, Death, Sexual violence, Animal death, Racism, and Adult/minor relationship

Minor: Police brutality, Sexual assault, Antisemitism, Classism, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Sexual content, Violence, Abandonment, Pregnancy, and Torture

ruthmoog's review against another edition

It's weird and boring, and since I wanted to enjoy books again, I had to stop!

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Dementia, Racial slurs, War, Mental illness, and Ableism

elisabeth_with_an_ess's review against another edition

challenging dark inspiring mysterious 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

3.0

Wow. Folks, I have got THOUGHTS on this book. Up to the last two chapters, I would not have said I was enjoying this book, in spite of being amazed by the undeniable brilliance of the writing. The plot seems to ramble all over the place, with events that I expected to be ultimately climactic in nature being nearly thrown away in the narrative. On top of that there were lots of scenes and events that made me feel deeply "squicky" (check the trigger warnings on this book before you read it, because there are some doozies). However, just when I would nearly make up my mind to stop reading, I would encounter a phrase or a piece of imagery that was so breathtaking that it would keep me reading. And then, as the book ended in a whirlwind of revelation and fulfilled prophesy, I was so glad that I finished the story. 

Even so, I don't think I can honestly give the book more than three stars, even for the brilliance of the final chapters. I don't think it makes up for the unnecessarily graphic descriptions of the Buendia family's hereditary vices.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Dementia, Excrement, Gun violence, Mass/school shootings, Mental illness, Police brutality, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Child abuse, Cursing, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, Pregnancy, Rape, Death, Incest, Infidelity, Sexual violence, Violence, Vomit, and War

_cecilie_'s review against another edition

1.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death of parent, Gun violence, Mental illness, Murder, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual content, Violence, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Colonisation, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Incest, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Pedophilia, Police brutality, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, and War

kia_y_k's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Alcohol, Blood, Child death, Child abuse, Incest, Infertility, Excrement, Vomit, Sexual content, Rape, Police brutality, Animal cruelty, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Dementia, Colonisation, Cursing, Genocide, Grief, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, War, Violence, Toxic relationship, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

jolineliest's review against another edition

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Pedophilia, Body shaming, and Sexism

Moderate: Sexual harassment, Mental illness, Death, Grief, Incest, Violence, Sexual violence, Racism, Racial slurs, Murder, Sexual assault, Rape, and Sexual content

Minor: Vomit, Self harm, and Pregnancy

sploack's review against another edition

challenging mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

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.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Incest, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Violence, War, Adult/minor relationship, Eating disorder, Religious bigotry, Rape, Child death, Confinement, Emotional abuse, Sexism, Abandonment, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Pedophilia, and Mass/school shootings

bluejayreads's review against another edition

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. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Death of parent, and Mental illness

Moderate: Rape, Infidelity, Incest, Body horror, Religious bigotry, War, Murder, and Sexual content

Minor: Adult/minor relationship

selenetanne's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious medium-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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Death, Gun violence, Sexual content, Violence, and War