Book 3 Review

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 In his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, G.G. Marquez makes an insightful revelation about cultural, social and political realities of the world which is difficult for the North American reader to fully recognize, understand and accept – so different it is from our world in many respects. This is the world of Colombia in the late nineteenth century – early twentieth century. This narrative about the myths and the realities of Latin American history brought its author international recognition and Nobel Prize in 1972.  Historical facts in the novel intermingle with fantastic events and abilities – some characters in the novel are able to predict the future, some live longer than it is possible to imagine – thus keeping the reader always in imaginative anticipation of what might happen to the Buendia family next. The third outstanding quality of the book is the uplifting experience that it gives to its reader through an extraordinary combination of irony, satire, and sadness. This powerful work of magic realism never loses the capacity to delight and surprise the reader through the sense of wonder at the world, which makes it impossible to put the book down.

Book Cover

The novel is the history of the founding, development, and death of a settlement called Macondo, which is the setting of the novel, and of the most important family in that town, the Buendias. At its foundation, Macondo exists in social harmony, like early Eden, when the world “was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point” (p. 11). After several civil wars and revolutions, the town moves into complete destruction. The development of the Buendia family symbolizes history of their country, in which people have no rational control over their own destiny. Metaphorically, the family history is the embodiment of the theme of solitude, fatalism and isolation, central to the novel. It is so because the members of the Buendia family, with all their vicious energy and intelligence, do not live their lives for the sake of their own goals, but actually they live their lives in the name of someone else’s values, Liberals, Conservatives, some other political parties that are unable to change life in Macondo to the better. The members of the Buendia family are isolated from historical reality by their inner withdrawal from it. As young men, they are eager to fulfill their ambitions, but become frustrated and end up withdrawing.

High literary quality of the novel comes from a very peculiar view of history as farce which is too fantastic or too cruel to be true. Experiencing history as fantasy is characteristic of magic realism of Marquez. The novel’s purpose is to give the reader this same feeling of history that the characters have: it seems that most of them sense that what is happening cannot really be happening: wars, endless rains, plagues, insects, and all kinds of disasters.  Moreover, in a fantastic way the family members tend to repeat the history of previous generations. Ursula, the mother of the family, has the feeling that the world is repeating itself: “It’s as if the world were repeating itself” (p. 276).  The sense of this tragically ironic repetition of events, combined with satirically precise characters creates the unforgettable atmosphere of the novel and is one of the novel’s strengths. 

For a sophisticated reader looking for existentially unforgettable experience, the book’s rating is undoubtedly 10/10 stars. This reader will fully appreciate the novel’s unprecedented historical setting, unexpected characters and plot full of delightful incidents. This reader will fully comprehend the book’s unforgettable magic reality, and the powerful atmosphere of tragic irony of solitary existence in an isolated and historically marginal place, such as Macondo.

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