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tmobil's review against another edition
4.0
Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching.
chroniqled's review against another edition
4.0
Hoping to read Marquez’s novels in the future
schoolboy's review against another edition
5.0
মার্কজ এর এই ছোট গল্পগুলো না পড়লে বোঝা যায়না কত স্বাভাবিক প্রেক্ষাপটে আমাদের পাশাপাশি একটা ম্যাজিকাল দুনিয়া বয়ে যেতে পারে। তার লেখাকে এক বাক্যে বর্ণনা করতে বলা হলে সবসময় বলি I feel tranquil. সমস্যা হল, এই শব্দটার ভাবার্থ বাংলা ভাষায় অনেক থাকলেও ঠিক এই 'শান্ত'টাকে ব্যখ্যা করার উপায় আমার জানা নেই। মার্কেজের দুনিয়ায় আছে কিছু বিষাদ, কিছু ভালোবাসা, আছে সময়ের অনন্ত বয়ে চলা। আমাদের অনুভূতিও তো ম্যাজিকাল। অনুভূতিটা যদি একটা আকার নিতে পারত, বাস্তব দুনিয়ার সাথে মিলে মিশে এক হয়ে যেতে পারত, কি হত? গল্পগুলোয় তেমন দুনিয়ার হয়তো দেখা মেলে, হয়তো আয়নার কোন প্রতিচ্ছবিতে একাকার হয়ে যায় আমাদের শরীরের ভিতরে বেজে ওঠা কোন প্রাচীন সঙ্গীতের প্রতিধ্বনি।
মার্কেজের ৩টা বই (i.e: Eyes of a blue dog, Big Mama's Funeral, The incredible and sad tale of innocent Erendira and her heartless Grandmother ) থেকে নেয়ে ২৫-২৬টা গল্প আছে। প্রায় সবগুলাই খুব সুন্দর। Eyes of a blue dog, Dialogue with the mirror, Tuesday siesta, No thieves in this town, Erendira and her heartless grandmother are my personal favorites.
আপনার যদি শহীদুল জহির বা আখতারুজ্জামান ইলিয়াস পছন্দ হয়, মার্কেজের এই ছোটগল্পের কালেকশন রিকমেন্ডেড। ভাল লাগবে আশা করি।
হ্যাপি রিডিং।
julia2705's review against another edition
5.0
gregbrown's review against another edition
3.0
This is the first I've read by Marquez and OK, I guess.
One of Marquez's themes that becomes clear over the course of these twenty-six stories is the way that the odd quickly becomes familiar, and how some things that are familiar are actually rather odd in practice. The first batch of stories, published as "Eyes of a Blue Dog" in Spanish, are insistently concerned with the limits of physical existence. The characters experience blindness, death, and other hardships tied to their bodies. Marquez finds a way to pick out the salient details, creating drama out of even a man shaving himself using his own reflection.
That reflection story in particular manages to hint at his later moves towards the fantastic. The third and final batch of stories starts with the excellent story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," which chronicles the arrival in town of a very old man with enormous wings. Initially a spectacle, he quickly ceases to hold any value for the town's residents, forced to subsist on mush in a chicken coop. Marquez shows how the ordinary can subtly be fantastic by presenting a fantastic situation that quickly turns ordinary. I suppose this is an aim of the larger magical realism movement too.
The voice is hard to pin down, too. It's got that slippery feel of translated prose to it, but not the simple, plain-spoken quality of Murakami's take on magical realism. It can be sensuous one moment, and clinical the next. It dives into characters and spins out of them just as quickly. It refuses to be pinned down, but still feels as if it was all written by the same author. I could never really get my thumb on it, partially because the stories span such a length of time in the developing talent of Marquez.
Overall, it was a pleasure to read but I can't say that I was blown away like I was by some of the other stuff I've read recently. The stories did have their wonderful moments, but they were diffuse and not quite as discrete-blow-to-the-cranium as the best ones are. The book felt weird, but too comfortable for my taste. Maybe it's because today's authors have already digested and iterated on Marquez's style, but the whole experience felt like I was reading something I'd seen somewhere else. I can understand why my friend Maggie so eagerly pushed it on me, but the effect was more of recognizing why it's good, not feeling why it's good.
joymcastle's review against another edition
oceliastanley's review against another edition
4.0
ryalcoll28's review against another edition
3.0
maam_md's review against another edition
4.0
graywacke's review against another edition
4.0
translators: Gregory Rabassa & J. S. Bernstein
published: 1984
format: 343 page paperback
acquired: December
read: Jan 18-25
rating: 4½
Original collections:
[b:Eyes of a Blue Dog|24293706|Eyes of a Blue Dog|Gabriel García Márquez|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1459515830s/24293706.jpg|1748923]: stories 1947-1955, English translation 1968. Translated by Gregory Rabassa
[b:Big Mama’s Funeral|4390|Los funerales de la Mamá Grande|Gabriel García Márquez|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1165431416s/4390.jpg|2321122]: stories 1962, English translation 1972. Translated by J. S. Bernstein
[b:The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother|36383044|The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother|Gabriel García Márquez|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|58072282]: stories 1968-1972, English translation 1978. Translated by Gregory Rabassa
Márquez spent his youngest years away from his parents, living in the Columbia coastal town of Aracataca with his grandparents, who he explains were both great story tellers. His grandmother would mix in fanciful aspects to her stories without breaking her tone, as if she was telling all fact. He has explained these were huge influences on his writing. And it seems he was always writing.
This is my first step into Márquez. I will follow him in mostly a chronological manner, and this collection includes some of his earliest published work. The first story, The Third Resignation, was published in 1947 when Márquez was 20 years old. What this collection offers in an evolution in the writing of talented and creative story teller.
[b:Eyes of a Blue Dog|24293706|Eyes of a Blue Dog|Gabriel García Márquez|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1459515830s/24293706.jpg|1748923], the first collection, is weakest and yet the one I find I have the most to say about, because of how his writing changes from story to story. Several things are notable about the earliest stories, The Third Resignation, The Other Side of Death, and Eva is inside her cat. They have striking opening lines, with words like "sharp", and phrases like "cold, cutting, vertical noise", they are psychoanalytical, idea heavy, and rather dull to read, leaving this reader interested, but counting pages till the end. The Other Side of Death ends "in the other world, the mistaken and absurd world of rational creatures,” A phrase that is maybe revealing as to where Márquez was headed. These stories all have very different approaches, and strengths. In the title story a man has an intimate conversations with a woman in his dreams, one he can see, but can't touch, and who he completely forgets as soon as he wakes, even as she keeps telling him how to find her. It's an exploration of desire and relationships. It's a good story, but most notable because of different way to approaching what he is exploring. Whereas the most compelling story for me, the first one where I forgot to count the pages, was straight forward. Titled The Woman Who Came at Six O’Clock, it's only a conversation, a flirtatious and manipulative one between between a woman and a bar tender in an empty bar. There are five more stories after that, and I would say each one is just a much better story, much more readable, then the earlier ones, but still very imaginative. And, in each story, it seems he's getting closer to home.
Every story in [b:Big Mama’s Funeral|4390|Los funerales de la Mamá Grande|Gabriel García Márquez|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1165431416s/4390.jpg|2321122] is well developed. One might say a maturing author developing into mastering his abilities. The stories are starting to feel like pieces of a larger worlds, like Márquez is just giving us a window and that he could keep going on and I wouldn't have minded. Most of these stories are very much his world in small town coastal Columbia, in Aracataca, which gets mentioned in the last story, the title story. Characters reoccur, the tone changes, and there is a heavy, if dark or darkly tinted, humor. In the title story the tone is hyper-formal. "...and for the third time in twenty centuries there was an hour of confusion, chagrin, and bustle in the limitless empire of Christendom...
The author of [b:The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother|36383044|The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother|Gabriel García Márquez|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|58072282] is not experimenting so much as making his points through story telling. In the opening story, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, an angel falls into a town and becomes something like a zoo attraction. He doesn't speak and doesn't interact with anyone, just stoically bides his time until his wings heal and he wordlessly flies off. What is Márquez saying? The main sense in all these stories is of a fairy tale, but with all the dark elements, with wonderful characters, usually leaving us with a sense of how small they are in a strange wider world they will never understand. When the outside world comes, it seems everyone always ends up losing something to them, and when they branch out, the characters just disappear. Several of these are really quote terrific, and they all leave something to think about, even if it seems mostly through the authors restraint. He just has a way of writing up strange or fantastic events in the same flat fairy tale tone and it leaves the reader wondering.
So, a fun a collection and a good start for my tour through his work.