Milica's review to follow.
Random comments
Really struggled and made little progress. Didn't like the stream of consciousness style. Never heard of Magical Realism writing.
Struggled at the beginning then began to really enjoy it. Struck by the author's amazing imagination, but couldn't make head or tail of of what was going on. The war section had something happening and then nothing was happening again. Much was really funny but also much I didn't get.
Read a long time ago and took ages to get through it but I absolutely loved it. Found it very emotional to read as it deals with the endless cycle of human existence and continually raised the question, "What is life?". At the end I could have cried my eyes out. It's a great book.
Very sceptical of high praise for a book. Salman Rushdie - "The greatest novel in any language for the last 50 years". Had mixed feelings about it. Too many themes. Mix of novel and philosophy. Was the author on Magic Mushrooms? But it aptly illustrated the saying - “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana) It was like Salvador Dali in prose. Begins with an Garden of Eden like setting that is despoiled by the church, and war, and politics and commerce. The historical aspects of Columbia's history I prefer to read in a non-fiction format. This novel didn't work for me and I didn't enjoy it.
I'm pleased to have read a revered classic. The lack of paragraphing made me read it really fast and kept going all the way through. I tried to make notes then gave up. The idea of progressing through 7 generation of one family, with their repeating names was a good idea for a novel. Enjoyed the details and the descriptions.
I had a go reading this on the enthusiastic recommendation of my oldest daughter. I have to say I gave up fairly soon but had another go a year or so later and gave up again. So, I'm really pleased Milica chose the book. It wasn’t a normal read. As soon as I had my feet on solid ground in a normal storyline, the ground gave way and I was falling into a crazy world where one character had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.
Or where a chapter starts with this sentence: “ It rained for four years, eleven months and two days.” then later “One Friday at two in the afternoon the world lighted up with a crazy sun as harsh as brick dust and almost as cool as water, and it did not rain again for ten years.
There is no distinction between reality and fantasy. On P2 is written, Jose Arcadio Buendia whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic... but isn't Marquez actually describing himself as he writes the novel.
Stream of consciousness – Fernanda’s rant (p328-340) is marvellous.
There's a menagerie of characters, strong and weak, ambitious and lazy set in a very patriarchal society; the men having love affairs, fighting wars, making gold fishes, locking themselves away or disappearing for years; the women dutifully at home, raising children, preparing meals, going to church creating a bedrock of stability.
Not only 100 Years of a family but 100 years of a community where a village becomes a town, prospers and then declines.
The novel leaves you thinking about human existence - the inevitability of fate - is everything actually predetermined? - and the repetitive, cyclical nature of our existence.
Jennie's Random Thoughts on ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’
Listening to the novel on Audible might be seen as the easy option, but it also meant that turning back a few pages or chapters to check a detail, or to visually recognise names of characters was difficult.
Immersing myself, however, in the book for long periods of time (whilst decorating, walking etc), helped create a sense of time going round in continuous circles to the point of extinction – as was the fate of the family and the town. At first, it was frustrating not being able to remember characters’ names and their relationships, but, once I accepted that the author was manipulating me way out of my comfort zone, being able to pinpoint place and time in the narrative became an irrelevance. The town, and also the characters to a certain extent, could be Everyman and every place. This idea of circular time was made more poignant by the echo of repeated names across the generations, each with a slight variation. The lives of the twins, perhaps, emphasised this idea. The repeated destruction and re-building of the family home, and the cycle of poverty to riches to greed to poverty was noted by the matriarch as ‘time is going in circles’.
The use of bizarre details was also confusing: the line between truth and fiction was blurred. My son (who knows much more about these things than me!) identified the genre as Magic Realism, though he failed to explain what that was. Nevertheless, I saw it as the characters’ flights of fantasy and a merging of the real and the dreams or nightmares of their imaginations. For example, the eating challenge with the woman known as The Elephant was abhorrent, fantastical, implausible, yet captivating.
As a reader who enjoys detail and description, I was moved (to tears and nausea and horror) by the description of the effects of the arrival of the railway, the weird clothes, the antics of the gypsies, the effects on the town of the banana plantation, to name a few of the many instances.
The gender differences were also interesting, as was the very gradual change in each generation of females as they shifted their behaviours as the outside world, particularly Europe and the US, seeped in. The men seemed to be obsessive, lustful, passionate, brutal thinkers; the women were strong, yet accepting of their lot, hiding away from life, yet restoring the men to some sort of equilibrium.
It is a book that needs to be read several times and these impressions are from a quick and superficial read.
What is staying with me, though, is the bitterness, the obsessions, the retribution, the sheer brutality, the power of unfulfilled passion and ‘the unbearable smell of rotten memories’ – a lingering one is of the girl just into puberty who died expecting twins in a room full of her childhood dolls.
Random comments
Really struggled and made little progress. Didn't like the stream of consciousness style. Never heard of Magical Realism writing.
Struggled at the beginning then began to really enjoy it. Struck by the author's amazing imagination, but couldn't make head or tail of of what was going on. The war section had something happening and then nothing was happening again. Much was really funny but also much I didn't get.
Read a long time ago and took ages to get through it but I absolutely loved it. Found it very emotional to read as it deals with the endless cycle of human existence and continually raised the question, "What is life?". At the end I could have cried my eyes out. It's a great book.
Very sceptical of high praise for a book. Salman Rushdie - "The greatest novel in any language for the last 50 years". Had mixed feelings about it. Too many themes. Mix of novel and philosophy. Was the author on Magic Mushrooms? But it aptly illustrated the saying - “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana) It was like Salvador Dali in prose. Begins with an Garden of Eden like setting that is despoiled by the church, and war, and politics and commerce. The historical aspects of Columbia's history I prefer to read in a non-fiction format. This novel didn't work for me and I didn't enjoy it.
I'm pleased to have read a revered classic. The lack of paragraphing made me read it really fast and kept going all the way through. I tried to make notes then gave up. The idea of progressing through 7 generation of one family, with their repeating names was a good idea for a novel. Enjoyed the details and the descriptions.
I had a go reading this on the enthusiastic recommendation of my oldest daughter. I have to say I gave up fairly soon but had another go a year or so later and gave up again. So, I'm really pleased Milica chose the book. It wasn’t a normal read. As soon as I had my feet on solid ground in a normal storyline, the ground gave way and I was falling into a crazy world where one character had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.
Or where a chapter starts with this sentence: “ It rained for four years, eleven months and two days.” then later “One Friday at two in the afternoon the world lighted up with a crazy sun as harsh as brick dust and almost as cool as water, and it did not rain again for ten years.
There is no distinction between reality and fantasy. On P2 is written, Jose Arcadio Buendia whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic... but isn't Marquez actually describing himself as he writes the novel.
Stream of consciousness – Fernanda’s rant (p328-340) is marvellous.
There's a menagerie of characters, strong and weak, ambitious and lazy set in a very patriarchal society; the men having love affairs, fighting wars, making gold fishes, locking themselves away or disappearing for years; the women dutifully at home, raising children, preparing meals, going to church creating a bedrock of stability.
Not only 100 Years of a family but 100 years of a community where a village becomes a town, prospers and then declines.
The novel leaves you thinking about human existence - the inevitability of fate - is everything actually predetermined? - and the repetitive, cyclical nature of our existence.
Jennie's Random Thoughts on ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’
Listening to the novel on Audible might be seen as the easy option, but it also meant that turning back a few pages or chapters to check a detail, or to visually recognise names of characters was difficult.
Immersing myself, however, in the book for long periods of time (whilst decorating, walking etc), helped create a sense of time going round in continuous circles to the point of extinction – as was the fate of the family and the town. At first, it was frustrating not being able to remember characters’ names and their relationships, but, once I accepted that the author was manipulating me way out of my comfort zone, being able to pinpoint place and time in the narrative became an irrelevance. The town, and also the characters to a certain extent, could be Everyman and every place. This idea of circular time was made more poignant by the echo of repeated names across the generations, each with a slight variation. The lives of the twins, perhaps, emphasised this idea. The repeated destruction and re-building of the family home, and the cycle of poverty to riches to greed to poverty was noted by the matriarch as ‘time is going in circles’.
The use of bizarre details was also confusing: the line between truth and fiction was blurred. My son (who knows much more about these things than me!) identified the genre as Magic Realism, though he failed to explain what that was. Nevertheless, I saw it as the characters’ flights of fantasy and a merging of the real and the dreams or nightmares of their imaginations. For example, the eating challenge with the woman known as The Elephant was abhorrent, fantastical, implausible, yet captivating.
As a reader who enjoys detail and description, I was moved (to tears and nausea and horror) by the description of the effects of the arrival of the railway, the weird clothes, the antics of the gypsies, the effects on the town of the banana plantation, to name a few of the many instances.
The gender differences were also interesting, as was the very gradual change in each generation of females as they shifted their behaviours as the outside world, particularly Europe and the US, seeped in. The men seemed to be obsessive, lustful, passionate, brutal thinkers; the women were strong, yet accepting of their lot, hiding away from life, yet restoring the men to some sort of equilibrium.
It is a book that needs to be read several times and these impressions are from a quick and superficial read.
What is staying with me, though, is the bitterness, the obsessions, the retribution, the sheer brutality, the power of unfulfilled passion and ‘the unbearable smell of rotten memories’ – a lingering one is of the girl just into puberty who died expecting twins in a room full of her childhood dolls.