This book really surprised me, I hadn’t read the previous entries in the series but this worked fine as a standalone and I wouldn’t have even know it were part of a series without seeing it here, I had read some South American magical realism before and I disliked it but this was brilliant. 

The book is written from 2 perspectives, one from Estaben who you can’t help but hate even when the story is being told from his side, and another from a seemingly impartial unknown narrator who is revealed at the end. The switching between the 2 is deeply interesting. Estaben justifying his behaviour and couching it in soft language and the other using words like rape and whoring to give the other side to the same events. 

The magical realism is subtle and secondary to the main theme of family and all the different types of relationship that exist within one. There’re heroes and villains throughout but none are 100% one or the other, and they are able to forgive each other their monstrous behaviour out of love. As a result every character is deep and complete. The only downside is due to the scope of the story and the number of characters it’s hard to get invested in some of them so chunks of the book were a little flat. Realistically it needed to be longer to be able to fully explore everyone and work perfectly. 

This book is everything 100 Years of Solitude should be, it’s as good is all aspect, plot, characters, writing, and not only does it skip the 2 things I really disliked from that book (the incest and every character being named the same) it directly addresses those ideas and makes fun of them a little within the plot. 

Hopefully I’ll be able to get the rest of the series later and find the time to read them.