I read 100 Years of Solitude several years ago. I think I understood something like 57% of what was going on over the course of the 448 pages and I was fascinated by it and I couldn't put it down and it was one of the best books I had ever read.When I read a really good book, I usually want to seek out something else the author has written. But when I read something really transformative, I hesitate. I feel like it might disturb waters that I don't want disturbed. So it took me a long time to get back to Gabriel García Márquez, and the length of time it took was kind of on purpose. In the end, it was a Christmas gift from my brother that did it, a paperback of three novellas: "Leaf Storm," "No One Writes to the Colonel," and "Chronicle of a Death Foretold."
To say I'm glad to have gotten back to Gabriel García Márquez, and that these waters were worth disturbing, is an understatement. I think what I love about all three of these novels, and what I loved about 100 Years of Solitude, is that the storytelling is unconventional, but doesn't call attention to the unconventionality. In fact, Gabriel García Márquez's style is almost journalistic, straightforward and literal about things that are not at all literal. At the same time, the language is rich and descriptive, but rich and descriptive in a way that makes you feel like he's not really trying all that hard to be rich and descriptive.
The stories are interesting and beautifully told and unfold so gradually that you don't really know what the story is about until you reach the end. When I finished these stories, I wanted so much to talk about them afterward because there was just so much in them. Sometimes I wish books weren't such a solitary endeavor...
2 comments:
I have read El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba, but I've never read the other two. Glad you liked them. I think you're right about his prose—it's somehow vivid and rich, but without sounding forced. He really does talk like that in real life. It's been years since I last read García Márquez, back when I tackled Cien años de soledad before law school; you've reminded me that I really should go back and read some more.
Amie, since high school I read everything Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Did you miss reading "Love in the Time of Cholera" in your short lifetime? Probably the first book marketed to the general public while Solitude became a worldwide sensation simply by its merits and word of mouth (Cholera was even made as a movie). I would never dispute, however, that "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is his masterpiece--although many of his books and stories come close with their own unique endearments.
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