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A review by ed_moore
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
“The world must be all fucked up when men travel first class and literature goes as freight”
Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘One hundred years of solitude’ recounts the life of the mysterious Buendía family in the remote village of Macondo across six generations, as they battle love affairs, political dispute, a lot of grief and a lot of childbirth. I really enjoyed the generation of the family focused on Colonel Aureliano Buendía and later José Arcadio Segundo who serve roles as a revolutionary leader and a workers union leader under turbulent South American revolutionary politics, mirroring political turmoil alike to the Cuban revolution.
Beyond this ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ was quite confusing. It follows far too many generations of the family and characters to develop any significant plot arc or character developments, as they all very swiftly are born, marry, have children and die again. Hence the story becomes very confusing. This is especially not helped by how difficult it was to keep track of the characters as García Márquez has characters name their children after themselves hence I struggled to follow which characters were being written about and who they had significant relationships with. Even beyond this I felt like the relationships between characters were quite weak and had no real grounding or structure to them, each character sort of existed in its own separate sphere (I guess hence the solitude) but a death held no impact and even was brushed over as a non-event by García Márquez on the majority of occasions. There was really no life in the characterisation of the Buendía family, and with a very hard to follow plot a lack of distinct character made reading really difficult. One character has 17 sons of which he calls all of Aureliano for goodness sake!
Beyond this ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ was quite confusing. It follows far too many generations of the family and characters to develop any significant plot arc or character developments, as they all very swiftly are born, marry, have children and die again. Hence the story becomes very confusing. This is especially not helped by how difficult it was to keep track of the characters as García Márquez has characters name their children after themselves hence I struggled to follow which characters were being written about and who they had significant relationships with. Even beyond this I felt like the relationships between characters were quite weak and had no real grounding or structure to them, each character sort of existed in its own separate sphere (I guess hence the solitude) but a death held no impact and even was brushed over as a non-event by García Márquez on the majority of occasions. There was really no life in the characterisation of the Buendía family, and with a very hard to follow plot a lack of distinct character made reading really difficult. One character has 17 sons of which he calls all of Aureliano for goodness sake!