A review by fcty
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

5.0

i wasn’t sure how much i was going to like this when i started reading it and realised how much incest and pedophilia is in this book, but this book honestly took my breath away. the further into the book i got the more things started to click into place in my brain and i read the last page with an ache in my heart. i don’t think any other book that features magical realism, generational trauma and the cyclical nature of history can be fairly compared to this, because i thought the elements of magical realism were so well-woven into the story that it felt natural to hear that a random character can shit diamonds (though i acknowledge that i need to read more LatAm lit since ‘magical realism’ is more akin to a way of viewing the world). all this alongside astute critique of Columbian and Latin American governance, the military, the complicity of imperialist first world nations in exploiting the third world for capitalistic gains and the subsequent loss of a unique culture to the forces of globalisation, and finally, a warning against nostalgia.

(side note: gabriel garcía márquez could conceive of almost every member of the Buendia family being incestuous, with some of them being pedophiles and one offhand implication of bestiality, but couldn’t conceive of any of them engaging in homosexuality?? come on)