Monday, May 28, 2007

One Hundred Years of Solitude

I read this book over a period of six months. It's not the kind you can't put down. There are so many characters spinning around and so many things happening over such an extended period of time, to comprehend it all takes a while. That multiple characters have same name make it a little more harder. Very thoughtful of the author to have provided a family tree right in the beginning.

It has one of the most beautiful opening lines impressively followed by pages portraying Jose Arcadio Buendia's passion for science. I loved the reference to ice, magnets, earth and its shape, the compass and so on. Unbeatable portrayal of a curious mind. Set in a fictional village Macondo, it traces Buendia's family history over a period of one hundred years. This is my first attempt at reading magical realism and there are parts of this book I thoroughly enjoyed. Somewhere in between, I thought it got a little repetitive with the arrival of Pilar Ternera. However, after a few pages of boredom, it always got interesting, so I had to just hang in there. Since I read this more than a year ago, I am unable to mention finer details. Ursula's character lived for most part of the novel, being a pillar of the huge family from beginning to end. Melquiades' character was like Godfather for the entire Buendia family, continuing to live even after his demise through his parchments. The closing pages are equally absorbing and sound so surreal, especially the sentence

The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by the ants.

It is hard to keep the reader's attention to the variety of events happening to all the Buendias, their sons and daughters, and their offsprings. But Garcia Marquez has achieved the same effortlessly by combining science, history, war, and magical realism. A classic.

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