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

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Author) "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover..." (more)
Key Phrases: story about the capon, little gold fishes, insomnia plague, Aureliano Segundo, Colonel Aureliano, Arcadio Segundo (more...)

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: 8 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (254 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,183 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #1 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics > Latin American
  #4 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( G ) > Garcia Marquez, Gabriel
  #8 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Latin American

• This is item 49 in The Oprah's Book Club Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

307 of 342 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 (REAL NAME)

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.

123 of 140 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

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.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the greatest books of the 20th Century, April 25, 2004

By	Ratmammy "The Ratmammy" (Ratmammy's Town, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Reading and finishing ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a challenge and a chore. I found myself falling asleep at times, at others I wanted to chuck the book. But as I found myself reading more and more of this classic book, I wanted to finish it and wanted to be able to give an honest critique about one of the most important novels written in the 20th century.

Why was this book a chore to read? Because Marquez chose to write this novel in the rambling style imitating his grandmother, who would tell him stories when he was a child. There are paragraphs that go on forever, and in fact, there is one sentence that went on for two pages. When I got past that 2-page sentence, I almost laughed out loud. Wow!

Next thought comes to mind - was this book worth reading? Yes! The problem with this book is that one cannot just read the first 100 pages and decide "this is awful". Without getting to the end, one will not have the true satisfaction of what the book encompasses, will not understand what the book was about. When I got to that last page, I put the book down and realized I had just finished an epic novel by an author that obviously deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature. The book was indeed pure genius.

To sum it up, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE is an epic story in the birth, life and death of the small fictional town of Macondo in a South American country. It parallels several generations of Buendias. One of many themes that passed through the family was the fear of one of the descendants would be born with the tail of a pig. Incest is one of the themes that runs rampant throughout the book, one of the many funny elements that kept me reading. (Not to give it away, there is one child that is born with a tail. I'll leave it to the reader to find out!).

Another theme I saw that was obvious by the time I ended the book was reality versus magic realism. While the earlier portions of the history of Macondo was rooted in magic brought to the town by the Gypsies, as one reads further into the story, one encounters realities of war, life and death, and other happenings that this town held as important. A major turning point was the start of the Banana Company and the arrival of the white man. And in turn the people of the town had to deal with unions, and workers benefits. What was so shocking was the cover up of an event that came about from a strike. The fact that the townspeople could believe in the lies the Banana company would say to cover up this event was shocking, yes the townspeople easily believed in flying magic carpets and other mystical happenings. It is true that people will believe what they want to believe, and not necessarily what is the truth.

The members of the Buendias family were all larger than life. The Jose Arcadios and the Aureliano's were the two main male characters, each generation being named for someone in the previous one. Remedios and Amaranta were the common female names, all of them in their own right standing out as someone that was special and unique. Ursula and Jose Arcadios Buendias were the matriarch and patriarch of the family. Ghosts abound; magic is an every day occurrence. The novel is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's most famous novel and helped give credit to the genre known as Magic Realism (other good examples are HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS by Isabelle Allende and THE SECOND DEATH OF UNICA AVEYANO by Ernesto Mestre-Reed).

This reader gives ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE a five star rating. It is not recommend to those who will not have the patience to read a rambling style of narrative. It is difficult, and often times frustrating. As seen by the many negative reviews on Amazon, mostly by Post-Oprah publication readers, please note that this book is not for everyone. But for those who can appreciate fine world literature, this if for you.