Customer Reviews

100 Years of Solitude: Modes of Reading (Twayne's Masterwork Studies Series, No. 70)

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2 star:		(1)
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Regina Janes offers a comprehensive, engaging analysis of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, taking into account the multiple "modes of reading" and interpreting this masterpiece and Latin American bestseller. Janes approaches this novel through its literary and historical contexts and explains the many ways that readers have understood One Hundred Years of Solitude: politically, biographically, intertextually, and from the angles of myth and magical realism. In the process, Janes provides a convincing examination of the novel itself, observing that "If García Márquez does have a single, modern myth for us, it may be the desirability of preserving, fostering, nurturing our sense of unreality. Neither the real world in which we are mired nor the books we read to remove ourselves, temporarily, to a better world should be entirely believed" (p.130).

I appreciate Janes's work for its recognition and analysis of the multiple ways of interpreting this text, and I recommend it to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the critical discourse surrounding One Hundred Years of Solitude.

100 Years of Solitude is a masterpiece that weaves a beautiful vision of magical reality responsible not only for telling about Latin America's prevoking use of imagination and mysticism, but giving a semi-fictional writen history of Colombia's battle for independence. Garcia Marquez can make you think you have wings.

Everyone says that One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the most important books ever written (it was even runner up to best novel of the century in TIME Magazine), but I beg to differ. I found the author's style unpolished and uncontrolled, I found it to be too long, and I've read better attempts at mystical realism. Catch 22 is a wonderful book and pulls the style of wonderfully, while Marquez lacks in almost every respect. I do give him some merit for imagry, but overall I really can't understand why everyone thnks this book is so great.