ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE BY GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ (TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY GREGORY RABASSA)

BOOK NAME: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

AUTHOR NAME: GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ (TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY GREGORY RABASSA)

GENRE: LITERARY FICTION

PUBLISHER: PENGUIN BOOKS

BOOK BUY LINK: https://www.amazon.in/Hundred-Solitude-Harper-Perennial-Classics/dp/0060883286

BOOK COVER IMAGE

BOOK REVIEW

I know most of you would have already read this book and lived through its magic. But I needed to find the perfect time to start this since I wasn't prepared for Marquez's world earlier. As someone who adores Murakami, picking this one was inevitable, and I can see how their worlds are so similar yet very different, exceptional in their own ways. I savoured this book over months to absorb its essence and enjoy the journey. 

The cursed town of Macondo, a fictional land, is discovered and occupied by the  Beundia couple, Jose Arcadio Beundia and Ursula. The story is of the founding and the catastrophic ending of their lineage in Macondo after endless years of solitude, repression, resentment, failures, anger, and love.

When I skimmed through the first few pages, I never really thought I would get through this book as it made no sense to me at all. There was death within death, rooms within rooms and wandering souls living like humans. Someone started thirty-two uprisings and lost them all, someone killed men who were intoxicated by her beauty, and someone died in solitude after living under the chestnut tree for years. An Aureliano is a commando; another seventeen are his sons who unfortunately never carry the lineage forward; the other two Aurelianos are the great-grandsons.

At one point, I couldn't keep up with the repetitive names and the looping narratives, but slowly, I became a part of the Beundia family, and things started making sense. I could differentiate each person from the narrative and could correctly point out which Arcadio and Remedios were which ones from the family tree and such. 

I loved Ursula, the mother hen, the fighter who held her entire lineage under her command even after she was dead. There are too many deaths, too many births, too many incestual relationships, too many affairs. But that will never break the joy of reading this book. The end, where the last of the Aurelianos deciphers the manuscript that had been lying in his house for several hundred years, is the part that gives closure to the entire book. The labyrinthine plot and narrative unfolded itself to make sense of the last few hundred pages. The writing is extraordinary, and one should not miss reading this book in their lifetime. The political and historical pointers in this book were too commendable. 

Don't ever get overwhelmed by the reviews of this book about the magical realism and the confusing narrative, and make sure to read it because this book must never be missed. Onto his next. 

MY REVIEW: 5/5 

This post is a part of Blogchatter’s #TBRchallenge

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