Customer Reviews

Gabriel García Márquez : A Life

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Gerald Martin's biography of the Nobel Laureate, "Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life," is an extraordinary and gripping book. Rich in information and helpful insight regarding Gabriel Garcia's likes and dislikes and obsessions, this marvelous biography reads like a novel, and it is bound to fascinate its readers,

Gabriel Garcia was less than a year old when his mother left him to the care of her parents. He was too young to have had any memories of her, and so when she returns six years later, he doesn't recognize her. He is deeply perplexed when he realizes that he does not love her. He does not love her because he did not even know her. She leaves him again, quite soon.

The author has written quite admirably about Gabriel Marquez's affair with the Spanish actress Tachia Quintana and Gabriel's friendship with Fidel Castro and his empathy with liberals and leftists.

Gerald Martin writes well. He is especially good at describing the small villages and towns and banana plantations of Colombia and its rich topography. His descriptions of Colombia's natural beauty are vivid. This biography grips a reader's attention from the very beginning, and holds it to the very end: "One hot, asphyxiating morning in the early 1930s, in the tropical coastal region of northern Colombia, a young woman gazed through the window of the United Fruit Company train at the passing banana plantations. Row after row after row, shimmering from sun into shade."

Those who love Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novels will find this book quite helpful in understanding several of his puzzling obsessions. For example, the author explains why Gabriel has written almost obsessively about illegitimate children in many of his novels: his family had so many of them! This is truly a very detailed, fascinating biography, meticulously written.

I have long been an avid reader of Latin American literature, but this biography sent me running to the Internet to find out more details about people and places mentioned in Gabriel García Márquez' life. Gerald Martin does a superb job of letting the reader penetrate the backgroud and the events that produced what many consider to be the world's masterpieces in Spanish. I read the entire book in two days, and I will read it yet again...well worth your time. Extremely well done. I especially loved the last paragraph!

A riveting account of one man and his relationships with his home country and the intertwining cause and effects of the associated western world, which transpired so eloquently in the biography. It provided a better understanding of the inspirations of his many writings.

A. Spencer
Chicago

Gerald Martin has taken on an outsized task in this book which defines Gabriel Garcia Marquez's long and complex life and his resulting outlook. It is obviously a labor of love, spanning almost 20 years.

The work is chronological, tracking his life and its synergic literary output. Martin shows how GGM's novels illustrate the scenes, people and tenor of his unusual youth in a politically unstable county. GGM pulls from the experience of his home region which he never really leaves despite a long departures and the purchase of foreign residences. He essentially marries the region in marrying Mercedes to whom he proposed in their adolescence. Despite their pre-marital differences in life experience, the marriage worked and still holds together after 50 years. Like the marriage, his life takes long and circuitous routes back home.

Martin takes the reader through what might be GGM's deepest thoughts as expressed through his novels and political writing. The saga covers continents and powerful international events. Over time, the early passion for socialism peels away. It is not expressed in words, but what else can be made of GGM having dictator friends who imprison and/or execute his intellectual colleagues? There is no real answer as to why he tolerates these leaders who trample on human rights, sometimes with their bank accounts full of the country's money. GGM points to the few he's used his influence to save, but the argument is weak considering the enormity of the rights violations of these leaders whom he supports.

There are many episodes that could be their own books (some have extensive treatment elsewhere as noted by Martin). A few are: his travels behind the Iron Curtain, the saga of the Nobel Prize, the Castro relationship, and the affect of his fame on his country, region and family.

The reader benefits not only from Martin's extensive research, but also from his understanding of Latin America and his specific knowledge of 20th century Colombian events. For the reader there are lots of names to lose track of, I was grateful for the index.

Several years ago GGM put his pen to the topic of his childhood and youth in Living to Tell the Tale. The autobiography, like his novels, is atmospheric and metaphoric (Martin demonstrates that even the title is so). If you plan on reading it, I advise that you read Martin's biography first for orientation. If GGM's orinally promised volumes 2 and 3 are ever produced (doubtful, given Martin's final chapters) Martin would be a good preparatory read for them as well.

I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

If you love real latin literature, this book is the most insightful biography of Marquez and his colleagues I have read. It lends itself to understanding the influences on his writing and his political stance. it is well researched and organized for the student but also most enjoyable for avid readers.

this captivating book at once encapsulates the idiosyncracies of latin american history experienced by GGM and explains his writing in the context of the world as he has lived it, in the way only a gifted literary critic could do. inmensely readable, entertaining, relatively objective, and truly informative. It is only "relatively" objective because Professor Martin is clearly not immune to the charms and charismatic appeal of his subject; however he strives to explain the positions of those who disagree or dislike his subject. This is an engrossing and most readable introduction to latin american intellectual and political life in the later 3/4's of the 20th century, and includes important references to the complex relationships of its intellectuals with its former colonizer, with France, and with the US. Professor Martin interviewed an impressive array of intellectual and political power brokers from Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Spain, France, and the US, in addition to a very extensive network of his subject's lesser known friends and relatives. Despite the participation of so many high powered personae, the book does not dwell on their fame, but rather limits their participation to shedding light and understanding on this most remarkable of writers. Additionally, this book serves as a fascinating, informative and remarkably clear portrayal of Colombian history since c. 1920 that will be helpful to all who are either curious about the country or who struggle to understand its labyrinthine and violent complexities.

Well, before sharing some impressions, let me cut to the chase and say that despite a slow start at the beginning (the genealogy of García Márquez's parents), this book is very compelling for anyone who loves the work of García Márquez. If you haven't read García Márquez, go read him and come back to this biography after you've fallen in love with the writer. There are tons of tidbits, as one might imagine and hope for in a biography like this, and it's very entertaining. Especially fun are the close readings of several key novels in a biographical register. I'm not sure I agree with these wacky readings sometimes, but it's cool to see how The Patriarch from The Autumn of the Patriarch can be read as reflection of the author himself, for example, or how all kinds of random and not-so random details about the author's life enter into his fiction.

Gerald Martin is an authorized biographer who became close to the García Márquez family, as well as to the great writer himself. The warmth he feels for García Márquez is patent. It is revealing, for example, that Martin explains that he wanted to put this book out sooner rather than later so that García Márquez himself could read it. It seems that Martin has enough material for a much longer biography, and perhaps a more revealing one.

If you think that I'm hinting at something with all this business about Martin being an authorized biographer, it's true, I am. The book is gentle on García Márquez, it avoids or minimizes certain... controversial... kinks in his life story. For example, Martin seems timid about the infamous fight between Vargas Llosa and Gabo, as he is about later accusations of sexual infidelity. There is also a curious reticence in the section on Love in the Time of Cholera, when Martin is not as forthcoming about how this book reflects what is going on in the writer's life.

My other random impression is that I did not think that Martin fully explained García Márquez's obsession with befriending powerful political figures. Everyone talks about his relationship with Fidel, and that's interesting, to be sure, but there's something weird about a guy who seems to chase after presidents and other important figures. For example, if García Márquez is such a communist (as some of his most impassioned detractors would declare), what is his relationship with Carlos Andrés Pérez all about? Why is he so suspicious of Chávez? In short, there are sketchy parts. That's not such a bad thing. The biography does not exhaust the mystery of García Márquez, it just provides contexts.

What can I say? This book is a great, illuminating read. But it left me curious about the one or two unauthorized biographies out there (which have not been translated into English as of yet.)

I really enjoyed reading this book. It is a well researched biography of one of the great writers of our time.

An extremely well researched biography of one of the great writers of our time. Made me want to read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" again, for probably the 7th time. Has great insights into One Hundred Years of Solitude (P.S.) Columbian history and culture. Latin countries consider him a modern Cervantes. A must read for those of us who have been enthralled by each publication by this giant. Many thanks to Gerald Martin for his 17 years of effort.

After living in Colombia for 3 years and visiting many of the small towns where Gabo lived and influenced so much his writing, I am awed at the time and effort the author put into researching this book. Many of the small towns have not changed that much while Cartagena and Barranquilla most certainly have. I hope the author would contribute to the making of a map of the places he visited - a Macondo tourism circuit. The tourism offering of the Colombian Caribbean coast is the most unique of anywhere in the Caribbean basin. The areas around Cartagena, Barranquilla, and Santa Marta include two UNESCO World Heritage Cultural and Historical sites, three National Parks, culturally intact indigenous populations, a major portion of Colombia's huge biodiversity including large numbers of unique endemic species, a 5,777 meter snowcapped peak only 42 kilometers from the Caribbean, and the land of Macondo that produced Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Gabo), Shakira, and folkloric dances such as the Cumbia and Mapale. I hope Martin's book inspires people to visit in the spirit of what National Geographic calls Geotourism.