One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club) [Paperback]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 2004

One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career.

The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.

Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility -- the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth -- these universal themes dominate the novel. Whether he is describing an affair of passion or the voracity of capitalism and the corruption of government, Gabriel García Márquez always writes with the simplicity, ease, and purity that are the mark of a master.

Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. Translated into dozens of languages, this stunning work is no less than an accounting of the history of the human race.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Buendía, stands before the firing squad. In between, he recounts such wonders as an entire town struck with insomnia, a woman who ascends to heaven while hanging laundry, and a suicide that defies the laws of physics:

A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.
"Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.

The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house."

With One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez introduced Latin American literature to a world-wide readership. Translated into more than two dozen languages, his brilliant novel of love and loss in Macondo stands at the apex of 20th-century literature. --Alix Wilber

Review

"One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. It takes up not long after Genesis left off and carries through to the air age, reporting on everything that happened in between with more lucidity, wit, wisdom, and poetry that is expected from 100 years of novelists, let alone one man...Mr. Garcia Marquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound, meaningful, and meaningless in life." -- William Kennedy, New York Times Book Review

"Fecund, savage, irresistible...in all their loves, madness, and wars, their alliances, compromises, dreams and deaths...The characters rear up large and rippling with life against the green pressure of nature itself." -- Paul West, Book World

"More lucidity, wit, wisdom, and poetry than is expected from 100 years of novelists, let alone one man." -- Washington Post Book World

"The first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race." -- William Kennedy, New York Times Book Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (January 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060740450
• ISBN-13: 978-0060740450
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (262 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,370 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

316 of 352 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More who read it hate it than love it, but I loved it., January 22, 2004

By 

Mark E. Baxter "Inquirer" (Layton, UT United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

I first read this book about 10 years ago in a neighborhood book club I belonged to. Of the group of about 10 people, 8 hated it and only 2 loved it. No one was indifferent.

Just because I gave this book a 5-star rating doesn't mean I think everyone will like it. In my experience most will not. That's because the book is hazy and doesn't make sense. I often found myself flipping back 100 pages to figure out how the current character was related to the other previous characters. Sometimes I would find that the current character was the same character that had died or disappeared 100 pages previously.

If you don't know already this book is the fictionalized story of generations of a family and the latin-american town in which they live. It was one of the first books to be written in a style that is called "magic-realism". That means that the book doesn't have to make sense.

This book is one of the top books I have ever read because it is the history of the world and everyone in it. I found myself over and over identifying with a character or recognizing someone I knew in a character. And as far as the "magic-realism", I find that that is exactly the way life really is. I found that this book applies to everyone and its themes and characters are universal. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is just a latin-american genre book. Nor should you think it is a dense, philosophical novel. The stories and sub-plots are captivating and interesting.

In short, this book is weird and wonderful. Give it a shot and you might be surprised as I was.

129 of 147 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CONFUSING AND ENCHANTING, DIFFICULT TO READ CLASSIC, January 25, 2004

By 

Denis Benchimol Minev "Amazonia" (Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

This is not an easy to read book; if you are looking for light reading, this is not it. Also, this is not a book to read quickly; it takes a lot of reflection to try to grasp the meaning (and often times you don't) of the wonderous stories.

Having said that, this is a wonderful book. Garcia Marquez tells the story of a family and a town, Macondo. The things that happen there are surreal; strange murders, sleeping disorders, scientists, soldiers, all revolve around the mansion of the Buendia family in Macondo. The tales introduce the reader to 20th century Latin American literature, with tales of love, sadness, desperation, hurt, and loss.

This is Garcia Marquez's most famous work, and arguably his best. It is a book to be savored slowly, page by page, contemplated and reflected upon. If you are looking for a page turner or light reading, feel free to skip this book. It is made for a very specific type of reader, one that will take the time to decypher the meaning of the stories and uncover the artistic content hidden just below the surface of the page.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great writing, difficult to follow, January 2, 2006

By 

Q "stickman0" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

I agree with others that this is a difficult read. I was honestly enjoying the book after the first couple of chapters, however. The writing is excellent, the story and its many twists intriguing. It all fell apart for me about halfway through when I realized I was no longer able to distinguish the characters and keep up with who was child of whom and who had died and how, etc. -- all critical to the continuing understanding of the story line. The author's choice to give the vast cast of characters very similar names was mind boggling. After a point, I simply could not -- without a fair amount of note-taking and diagramming I was not willing to do --keep up with all of the Aurelianos and Arcadios. Hats off to those who could finish it. I, unfortunately, could not.