And they all died. Once upon a time there had been a town-wide plague of insomnia-induced memory loss, a woman who rose to heaven with her sister-in-law's precious sheets, and rains that lasted for four years, eleven months, and two days. And so it goes.
My thoughts
I had to struggle to finish this book. Every now and then, I pick out a book because it's on all the "100 Best" and "Must Read Before You Die" lists. Experiences like this make it easier for me to ignore those snobby lists. I was disappointed.
Jose Arcadio Buendia, his wife Ursula, and their merry band of followers leave their hometown and wander around in search of the ocean, where they've decided to build a new settlement. They never find the ocean, so they eventually just plop down in the middle of nowhere. The plot is pretty straightforward—it charts Jose Arcadio and Ursula's exploits and those of their descendants for almost 500 meandering pages.
I love epic family sagas, but this one didn't hold my interest. The characters all have variations of the same names, but they're easy to keep track of through their individual incestuous and/or obsessive compulsive tendencies. I never felt close to any of the characters because there's not much to relate to.
The detached writing style and the sheer ridiculousness of the characters' circumstances don't help. I know that's Gabriel Garcia Marquez's style, but I prefer Jorge Luis Borges's brand of magical realism. Garcia Marquez has this maddening habit of introducing an event or idea that seems promising and then veering off on a tangent for seventeen pages (all one dense paragraph) before finally getting to the point. By the time I finally, finally reached the end of one of these, I was usually so exhausted/exasperated that I didn't get any reward from whatever I'd just read. Yes, the writing is lyrical, but the beauty was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of prose.
Bottom line
At least I can check this one off my list of must-read classics.
Fine print
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Genre: Classic fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I borrowed this book from the library
Edited for typos
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