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A review by tracib
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
3.0
This is one of those books were it felt like it was very important to read and I should love it. It’s on so many “best books” lists, the author won a Nobel Prize-shouldn’t this be the greatest thing since sliced bread?
It wasn’t, and to me it had to do mainly with the editing. The chapters were long, and did not have any breaks between situations. One example-a very minor character is brought in and shot in the last sentence of a paragraph. The very next paragraph makes no mention of the situation and goes on to discuss another character, which the previous paragraph had been discussing before the minor character. So it felt very disjointed. Just having a physical break between paragraphs would have helped in that instance. And so many of the sentences were almost run-on sentences. There were several paragraphs that were only made up of one or two sentences. I did have to stop and re-read several very carefully. I’m not sure if this was an issue with the translation or with the overall editing, but it made it very difficult to read. I sympathize with everyone who has struggled with this book.
The other thing that made this book difficult to enjoy was the fact that the male characters all had the same name with a few minor variations thrown in. And it was the same with the female characters. This made it very confusing to remember who was who, especially as the family kept growing. And it didn’t really get any easier as characters died, because they still didn’t go away or were talked about by others. The only thing that saved me was that the paperback version had a family tree listed in the beginning. I constantly went back and referred to it, sometimes multiple times for one page. And the previous owner had photocopied an additional tree, which I found near the back of the book. If this had been an Ebook I’m pretty sure I would have given up immediately.
I did love the flights of fancy-the gypsies with their flying carpet, four years of constant rain, girls using bedsheets to ascend to heaven, 140 year old women, just to name a few. In that respect I didn’t take the book too seriously-I wasn’t concerned with if those events actually happened or if that was someone’s imaginative way of interpreting it. Instead I just went along with the ride.
Overall I’m glad that I stuck with it, but I don’t think I would recommend it. If Goodreads allowed half stars, this would be 3.5. Now I’m off to read something a little lighter. Perhaps War and Peace?
It wasn’t, and to me it had to do mainly with the editing. The chapters were long, and did not have any breaks between situations. One example-a very minor character is brought in and shot in the last sentence of a paragraph. The very next paragraph makes no mention of the situation and goes on to discuss another character, which the previous paragraph had been discussing before the minor character. So it felt very disjointed. Just having a physical break between paragraphs would have helped in that instance. And so many of the sentences were almost run-on sentences. There were several paragraphs that were only made up of one or two sentences. I did have to stop and re-read several very carefully. I’m not sure if this was an issue with the translation or with the overall editing, but it made it very difficult to read. I sympathize with everyone who has struggled with this book.
The other thing that made this book difficult to enjoy was the fact that the male characters all had the same name with a few minor variations thrown in. And it was the same with the female characters. This made it very confusing to remember who was who, especially as the family kept growing. And it didn’t really get any easier as characters died, because they still didn’t go away or were talked about by others. The only thing that saved me was that the paperback version had a family tree listed in the beginning. I constantly went back and referred to it, sometimes multiple times for one page. And the previous owner had photocopied an additional tree, which I found near the back of the book. If this had been an Ebook I’m pretty sure I would have given up immediately.
I did love the flights of fancy-the gypsies with their flying carpet, four years of constant rain, girls using bedsheets to ascend to heaven, 140 year old women, just to name a few. In that respect I didn’t take the book too seriously-I wasn’t concerned with if those events actually happened or if that was someone’s imaginative way of interpreting it. Instead I just went along with the ride.
Overall I’m glad that I stuck with it, but I don’t think I would recommend it. If Goodreads allowed half stars, this would be 3.5. Now I’m off to read something a little lighter. Perhaps War and Peace?