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.