Collected Novellas [Paperback]

Gabriella Garcia Marquez (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins (1990)
• ASIN: B000OA5JKM
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two out of three ain't bad., March 3, 2003

By 

GeoX "GeoX" (Men...Of...The...Sea!) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Collected Novellas (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

The less said about 'Leaf Storm,' the better, I think. It was Garcia Marquez's first piece of long fiction, written in his twenties, and the truth is, it's not very good. Actually, it's pretty bad. It's overwritten in that 'bad Faulkner' way, and it lacks anything that would make for an interesting story--compelling characters, powerful conflicts, interesting ideas--none of these are to be found therein. It feels as if it should have received quite a bit of revision before publication. As it stands, its only real value is as an embryonic draft of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

'No One Writes to the Colonel,' on the other hand, is a truly excellent story. It's a slow, meditative piece with very little action, chronicling a month or so in the life of the title character and his wife in a stagnant Colombian town as he waits in vain for the pension, which he has been owed for fifteen years, to arrive in the mail. Although it's a subdued story saturated with sorrow and regret, it also features a strong undercurrent of hope which cannot be extinguished. The Colonel is an inspiring character, and, after One Hundred Years of Solitude, his story is my favorite thing I've read by Garcia Marquez. Apparently there's been a movie made of it, but I have no desire to see it.

'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' is also very good. It tells of the events surrounding and leading up to a brutal murder which ultimately implicates an entire town. Featuring the recollections of dozens of characters who were involved in the event, peripherally or seriously, it weaves a mesmerizing web of small events that all happen just the wrong way. The death is indeed 'foretold;' it could easily have been prevented by just about anyone in the story, yet somehow, no one does. In spite of knowing what's going to happen from the beginning, the story remains riveting, and even suspenseful, throughout. Don't miss it.

This volume is certainly a must-own for Garcia Marquez fans. Combined with Collected Stories, it includes the entire body of his early short fiction--so don't buy Leaf Storm and Other Stories, No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories, Innocent Erdendira and Other Stories, or Chronicle of a Death Foretold. They're redundant. No sense flinging money out windows, eh? Cheers!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Affordable Collection, March 19, 2000

By 

Michael Mcgrath "troppo67" (macondo) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Collected Novellas (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

Here between the bounds of this paperback we have 3 very good translations of short novels from the hand of Marquez...although I have yet to fully grasp "Leaf Storm", it does offer to the reader a sort of prelude to "Macondo"...although don't expect the world to be potrayed as it was in "One Hundred years of Solitude". ...the 2nd novella "No One Writes Colonel" is a great read...here is everyday life, as the colonel awaits a letter...however it is the third novella, "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" that drew me in, as a gripping page turner. Marquez holds our interest with his detailed account, even though we already know the outcome. It is a great collection and a good follow up if you have finished "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Highly recommended because in this edition you get al three works, whilst you could pay up to thrice as much if you pursued them seperately....

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Three very different, yet thematically connected, novellas that are among the author's most powerful works, July 25, 2009

By 

D. Cloyce Smith (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Collected Novellas (Perennial Classics) (Paperback)

A must-have bargain, this volume presents three of Garcia Marquez's four novellas--two written early in his career and one published after he had achieved worldwide fame. The earliest piece, "Leaf Storm" (1955) is, so to speak, a chronicle of a death scorned; it takes place during a mere half hour in the middle of the day in 1928, but it recalls the events of several decades. The story seems to echo deliberately several aspects of the plot, structure, and technique of Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying"; its stream-of-consciousness narrative alternates among three family members--a colonel, his daughter, and her young son--as they muse over what to do about a corpse. Unlike Faulkner, however, Garcia Marquez does not give the dead man--a local doctor--a voice; his life is instead recalled through the memories of the other three characters. The colonel and his family battle against those who would refuse the man a decent burial: the townspeople, because the doctor had refused to treat their wounded during the war, and the priest, who "won't let them bury in consecrated ground a man who hanged himself after having lived sixty years without God." Although the novella lacks the magic realism for which Garcia Marquez is now renowned, it nevertheless is one of his starkest (and, I feel, most powerful) efforts, anticipating many of his later themes and introducing the locales and characters who populate his more mature work.

"No One Writes to the Colonel" (published 1961, but written several years earlier) takes up anti-government themes only hinted at in "Leaf Storm" and makes them central to the story: tyrannical censorship, the insensitivity of officials, the violence of repression, corruption. A retired colonel and his wife endure two related struggles that consume his days of retirement. The old man hopes to receive the pension owed to him by the government; he visits the post office daily, expecting to receive a response to his applications, but "no one writes." Starving and broke, the couple argue over whether to sell the rooster left by their son (who was killed during recent political turmoil) or to raise it for fighting. Although the depictions of life are bleak and desolate, the colonel's repeatedly dashed hopes provide the work with a sardonic, almost Chaplinesque humor.

Comedic elements also pervade "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" (1981). By the time of its publication, Garcia Marquez had become known most of all for magic realism, and the enchantment here is to be found in the collective telepathy of the town's residents and the story's dream-like, Kafka-inspired atmosphere. This is basically a murder story that manages to be harrowingly suspenseful in spite of the fact that the reader is forewarned of the event, the victim, and the perpetrators--all in the first few pages. Instead of a whodunit, we have a whydunit--why did Angela suggest Santiago is responsible for her loss of virginity, why did her two brothers reluctantly kill their friend, and (most of all) why, even though "there had never been a death more foretold," were the townsfolk so complaisant about a murder they all knew was about to happen? Tradition, prejudice, apathy--all conspire to make everybody complicit in everyday, senseless acts of violence. In five tightly constructed chapters, Garcia Marquez has given us what may someday be considered his masterpiece.