One Hundred Years of Solitude

Synopsis
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

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Synopsis
Naive young Tess is content to be a Derbyfield; unfortunately for her, if she got to live out her life as an innocent country bumpkin there wouldn't be a story to tell. When Tess's grasping, self-aggrandizing father finds out he's descended from the noble d'Urbervilles, he sends her on a mission to ingratiate herself with the current occupants of the d'Urberville estate. She comes back in disgrace, having been knocked up by the odious d'Urberville scion. Her life is ruined. Or is it? Maybe the dreamy Angel Clare—nope, she's ruined. But what if—nope, never mind, she's doomed. Damn close-minded Victorian society.

My thoughts
The universe did its best to warn me not to read this book. Multiple people tried to steer me toward Hardy's other works, and the library's copy of Tess was missing the first 38 pages when I went to check it out. Too bad I was too stubborn to take those omens more seriously.

Hardy's habit of writing in circles irritated me. He'd introduce a plan and I'd think the plot was moving forward ... and then 20 pages later something would happen to move the plot right back where it had been. To give one non-spoilery example, at one point Tess writes a letter confessing all her "sins." She delivers the letter and then ... nothing happens. And then nothing happens some more. And then she discovers that the letter got stuck under a rug and was never read. It might have been okay if this had happened once, but Hardy did it repeatedly and that made the book excruciating. In general, the plot is long and meandering and too full of contrivances and coincidences. 
Tess was too naive and helpless and Angel was too much of a hypocrite for me to like, but I absolutely despised Alec d'Urbeville. I know he's meant to be the villain, but I hated him for reasons I don't think Hardy intended. He started out as an irredeemable character and then when he tried to redeem himself he somehow managed to make himself into an even bigger creep. (And why the fixation on Tess? If he was such a cad in the beginning, weren't there some other ruined women from his past that he could harass stalk apologize to?)

I guess I'm grateful to Hardy for exposing the faults and hypocrisy in the Victorian attitudes toward sex. I'm certainly grateful that times have changed.

Bottom line
Read it if you're a 19th-century social reformer. Otherwise, skip it.

Fine print
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
Genre: Classic fiction
Photo from Goodreads
I downloaded this on my iPad (gotta love books that predate copyright laws)