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3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
This book was really good. The story was interesting (even though I felt the main character to be a brooding a-hole, so it was sometimes difficult to read about him all the time.) The writing was very dense, but beautifully worded. Although it took me 4 months to read because the chapters were SO LONG! And overall the pace was very slow. But it was a good book--- I enjoyed it.
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
No one can write with such surrealism as Gabriel Garcia Márquez. This book is a constant flow of memories, current events and thoughts. This leads to great character depth and prose. Fermino is a loathsome lead but his romanticism can make you forget this. Overall the plot can meander but this books is a work of art that should be appreciated. It is also an interesting look into the turn of the 19th century as a bit of a historical fiction although not everything has aged well.
A tremendous novel, though not as good as One Hundred Years of Solitude [though, really, what is?].
A novel about love in its many forms, from transient to incidental to learnt to physical to metaphysical to everlasting to invented. And I think that last one, which I borrow from the novel, is part of the key: the invention of love. Each character, in his and her own way, invents love in a very real way.
But it's more than a simple love story. All the history of South America swirls around the events as endless war and revolution sweeps past the lovers, seemingly only touching the periphery of their lives, though curfews are imposed, rulers come and go, politics wave and flicker from left to right. The countryside is ravaged unknowingly, far away, but right at hand, if only the characters looked the other way, from love to death.
And it's circular, too, how the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end, in very real ways, in ways quite different from the way Finnegans Wake is meant to be a closed circuit. This book is very much alive and ever expanding, concentrically.
It's about seduction in its many forms as well and Garcia Marquez pulls us in, almost reluctantly, almost without us knowing, until we're so caught, so wholly in love with the book, as in love, maybe, as the characters are with one another, that even the thought of closing, of reaching the end, becomes unbearable.
To call it simply a love story is to do it a great injustice, but it is certainly a great love story. Not only in the obvious ways, in the way love literally drips off of every page, but also in the subtle ways that we may not even realise until we're one hundred pages deeper. For, in some ways, it's about the dangers and evils of love. About how love destroys, even as it brings us back to life. How the greatest lies and greatest debasements are often done in love's name.
Beautiful, humorous, and powerful. The kind of book that reaffirms life, in all its complexity, even at life's end.
A novel about love in its many forms, from transient to incidental to learnt to physical to metaphysical to everlasting to invented. And I think that last one, which I borrow from the novel, is part of the key: the invention of love. Each character, in his and her own way, invents love in a very real way.
But it's more than a simple love story. All the history of South America swirls around the events as endless war and revolution sweeps past the lovers, seemingly only touching the periphery of their lives, though curfews are imposed, rulers come and go, politics wave and flicker from left to right. The countryside is ravaged unknowingly, far away, but right at hand, if only the characters looked the other way, from love to death.
And it's circular, too, how the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end, in very real ways, in ways quite different from the way Finnegans Wake is meant to be a closed circuit. This book is very much alive and ever expanding, concentrically.
It's about seduction in its many forms as well and Garcia Marquez pulls us in, almost reluctantly, almost without us knowing, until we're so caught, so wholly in love with the book, as in love, maybe, as the characters are with one another, that even the thought of closing, of reaching the end, becomes unbearable.
To call it simply a love story is to do it a great injustice, but it is certainly a great love story. Not only in the obvious ways, in the way love literally drips off of every page, but also in the subtle ways that we may not even realise until we're one hundred pages deeper. For, in some ways, it's about the dangers and evils of love. About how love destroys, even as it brings us back to life. How the greatest lies and greatest debasements are often done in love's name.
Beautiful, humorous, and powerful. The kind of book that reaffirms life, in all its complexity, even at life's end.
emotional
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I felt like I kept waiting for something to happen and it never really did. And then a man in his 70s seduces a 14 year-old for whom he is supposed to be acting as guardian? He already wasn't a great character in my eyes and I just became disgusted with the book at that point. And by the end, not much has still happened.
"El amor era el amor en cualquier tiempo y en cualquier parte, por tanto más denso cuanto más cerca de la muerte".
Gabriel García Márquez logró hacer de un argumento sencillo, una increíble novela de ritmo perfecto, personajes construidos a la perfección y una nostalgia que se siente necesaria a cada página que pasa.
Gabriel García Márquez logró hacer de un argumento sencillo, una increíble novela de ritmo perfecto, personajes construidos a la perfección y una nostalgia que se siente necesaria a cada página que pasa.