One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Hi :) Here I am with another review from the Latin America Literature. 

Check out my last review about The Moon and the Bonfires by Cesare Pavese :)

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Today's review will be about the book One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. 

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It is a novel written in 1967 and tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the fictional town of Macondo. 

He establishes it together with his wife and first cousin, Úrsula Iguarán, after leaving Riohacha, in Colombia, because José killed a man after a cockfight. This founding is utopic, because they idealise the town by creating the perfect one, with no war, no violence, no gambling. Basically with no vices. 

José believes the town to be surrounded by water and thanks to this he invents the world according to his perceptions. Soon after its foundation, Macondo, starts to be populated and visited by individuals, such as gypsies tribes, whose leader is Melquíades. His appearing will lead to a friendship with the patriarch of the Buendía family, provoking also unusual and extraordinary events that will involve and affect also the following generations of Buendías. 

Melquíades will be seen as not such an important character through the book, but a more secondary one, if we can say so. The parchments he will leave to the family, though, at first not readable because they've been written with an ancient language, they will be the answers to all the question relating the family, making you understand the whole point of the book. 

One of the main theme in the book is: the inevitable repetition of history in Macondo, which makes the the protagonists controlled by their pasts and visited by ghosts through the story. The novel is work of magical realism, showing centuries of cause and effect whilst telling an interesting story. 

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I really enjoyed the book and I had high expectation of it, since I've heard many good things about it, and I didn't get disappointed. I must admit that I got a bit lost with all those Aurelianos and José Arcadio in the family, since they all gave the same names to their sons and daughters, but otherwise, it was a really interesting story that left in me a bit of sadness and melancholy for the ending and the fate of the Buendías. But I guess that that's what a good book is supposed to do, no? Leaving you with deep emotions while reading it and after you're done. If a book doesn't make you feel something, should it even be considered as such? 

Here I leave a family tree of the first two generations, to not spoil possible characters, so you won't get confused as me if you're deciding to read it ;)

- First Generation: José Arcadio Buendía, the patriarch, he married his first cousin Úrsula Iguarán. They had three children.

- Second Generation: José Arcadio is the first son of the couple in the first gen, married to Rebeca, Úrsula's second cousin. 

Colonel Aureliano is the second son of the first gen, married to Remedios, the youngest daughter of the Conservative Administrator of Macondo, Don Apolinar Moscote. He fathered 17 sons, all named Aureliano.

Amaranta is the third child of the first gen, never married. 

The Moon and the Bonfire by Cesare Pavese

  The Moon and the Bonfire

by Cesare Pavese

Hello I'm back for a review of a modern classic of Italian Literature. 

Check out my last review about The Mirror Visitor Saga by Christelle Dabos :)

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Today's review will talk about the book The Moon and the Bonfire (in Italian La Luna e I Falò) by the Italian writer, poet, translator, and critic of literature, Cesare Pavese. 

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The book was the last of his published in 1950 and dedicated to the woman in his life: Constance Dowling. It presents autobiographical elements and it takes place in Piedmont, a region in Northern Italy. 

The story revolves around the main character, of which the name is never told, but only his nickname: Anguilla ("Eel" in English). It focuses also on the other characters that he relations with in a town in the Valley of Belbo, of which we also don't know the name of. The book is a mixture of past and present, with events being told thanks to the thoughts and reflections of the protagonist. 

The book begins with Anguilla coming back as an immigrant from America after the Liberation (from the war). He comes back home with the thought of how his life started there, abandoned at the doorstep of the Duomo of Alba and then brought to the hospital of Alessandria, where he would have later been adopted by Padrino and Virgilia. 

After her death and a hail storm that destroyed their vineyard, Padrino decides to sell their house. Anguilla then will be transferred to the farm of the Mora, where he starts to work for the first time. There he finds wealth together with Sor Matteo and his three daughters: Irene, Silvia and Santa (the youngest). 

As a reader I happily got lost in the memories, sometimes sad that Anguilla relives with his friend Nuto because he is able to understand how much everyone needs a town, a family, an anchor, a point of reference that keeps us connected somewhere. Anguilla realises this when he's been called back from that sense of belonging together with a mix of nostalgia.  

Because of this, Anguilla will go to visit the house of Padrino, now belonging to an old man called Il Valino and his son Cinto, a crippled and solitary young boy. Cinto will remember to him how it feels to be young and he will try to be to him what Nuto has been to him. Thanks to this relationship, they will begin to be friends and Cinto feels like he can trust him with a shocking revelation that will happen later in the book. 

Anguilla will then find out about the other people who were part of his life before leaving for America, and it will make him realise that everyone of us needs a town. 

"A town means never being alone, knowing that in the people, in the plants, in the ground there's something yours that even when you go away, it's there, waiting for you."

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At the beginning it started really nice but then got lost in the middle for a bit of boring plot, but I must admit that reaching the end was totally worth it. The revelation of the fate of the other characters interconnecting with him were shocking and unexpected. Especially the fate of the poor Cinto and the three sisters. 

The friendship between Anguilla and Nuto, is that kind that everyone would like to have. Even if he left for America, when he came back, Nuto was back for him, as if, he actually never left. 

If you're into books talking about the after war period, this is totally the one for you ;)