One Hundred Years of Solitude

• 2 people found this helpful

A few things cleared up

This review is from: One Hundred Years Of Solitude Oprah #3 (Trade Paperback)

2 years ago

The book is supposed to implement magical realism, where magical activities are accepted as a part of normal life. Therefore, if someone is levitating, it's viewed as normal as if they were walking into the room. This is a recurring theme in many Latin American novels. Also, the reason that multiple characters have the same name is to show continuity within the generations and to show how all these characters are linked over the chasm of time. You can also see this in Salman Rushdie's… + read more

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Beautiful.

This review is from: One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Trade Paperback)

3 years ago

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a rollercoaster ride. His characters don't just speak to you, they stand up and scream to you. You, despite yourself, care about the Buendias, the marriages, the deaths and the births. I think one of the most beautiful places in the book is when the Orginal Buendia is tended to by the same man he murdered such a long time ago. Marquez uses magical realism to create a family you can almost remember gossiping about. It's not an easy book… + read more

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Not worth the effort

5 months ago

Though this novel effectively communicates the circular nature of time through the similarities of these family members as their line progresses, it was far too long-winded and seemed a bit overdone. Perhaps that's the fault of the translation, however I wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone.

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One Hundred Years of Solitude

This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Trade Paperback)

11 years ago

A lot like Marquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera, in that it gathers power as it rolls along. The style is hypnotic. When I read Marquez, there is love in the world, at all times, everywhere. Marquez's world of love is not a selfish one, of course. The ending of this novel points to this fact. It utterly engulfed me with the long history of love and longing that characterizes the Buendia family's struggle in Latin America.

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Entrancing and Complex

This review is from: 100 Years Of Solitude Classic Ed (Trade Paperback)

8 years ago

This is one of the most beautiful, complex and important novels i have ever read. Extremely satisfying to the last compelling page. One can say that it acts as a bible for the modern atheist: full of lust, murder, and betrayal. It should be read by everyone.

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Wonderful

This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Trade Paperback)

2 years ago

One of my favorite books ever!

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An immortal novel with musical chime

This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Hardcover)

10 years ago

One Hundred Years of Solitude: made me fall in love with literature. One Hundred Years of Solitude: inspired me to dream and cry in solitary. One Hundred Years of Solitude: scraped away all the rigidity from my hardened soul. One Hundred Years of Solitude: showed me the world of dispair in multi-colored rainbow. One Hundred Years of Solitude is the best of the best and I will always cherish its musical chime in my heart as long as I live. I just wish that all the human souls are exposed to this… + read more

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• 1 person found this helpful

Worth the Effort!

This review is from: One Hundred Years Of Solitude Oprah #3 (Trade Paperback)

3 years ago

I agree with the other reviews that it is a hard book to get into. The names are very confusing , so thank God for the family tree at the begining of the book. Once you give in to and accept the unrealistic aspects of the story you will be able to enjoy and appreciate the beauty of this book. It's a book that reads like someone telling you a tall tale that you want to believe is true! It is one of the most challenging but most rewarding books I have read in long time and I read quite a few… + read more

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a pleasure

9 months ago

I was captivated by this book for years I just kept coming back to it. This book brings politics and life in South America to life. This book contains some of the most glorious prose ever written. The greatest writer I have ever had the pleasure to get lost with.

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You HAVEN'T read this book???

This review is from: 100 Years Of Solitude Classic Ed (Trade Paperback)

9 years ago

Well if that is you, let me encourage you to do so now. If you read much at all, you will have come by dozens of books that are tediously classified as "greatest books of the 20th century". Well, leaving aside all hyperbole and exaggeration, this novel is perhaps the most sweeping epic to be written in years, and written with a style so unique from other modern writers that it is an absolute pleasure to read. Cautionary note: try to read it in as little time as possible, as the… + read more

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amazing

This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Trade Paperback)

3 years ago

Garcia Marquez' One hundred years of solitude is a fabulous book. At the beginning, one may find it somewhat difficult to remember all the characters (as most are all similarly named) yet once one gets into the book, one feels like part of the family. The book is full of magic and has one of the best, if not the, best ending ever.

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An immortal novel with musical chime

This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Hardcover)

10 years ago

One Hundred Years of Solitude: made me fall in love with literature. One Hundred Years of Solitude: inspired me to dream and cry in solitary. One Hundred Years of Solitude: scraped away all the rigidity from my hardened soul. One Hundred Years of Solitude: showed me the world of dispair in multi-colored rainbow. One Hundred Years of Solitude is the best of the best and I will always cherish its musical chime in my heart as long as I live. I just wish that all the human souls are exposed to this… + read more

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A very strange book

This review is from: One Hundred Years Of Solitude Oprah #3 (Trade Paperback)

3 years ago

Although I have read quite a few books recomended by Oprah, I have to wonder if she really read this book. It was completely unrealistic, everyone had the same name, and it took wayyyyy to long to finish. The fact was I had to force myself to finish it. I do have to say it was beautifly written, and some interesting things happen. It just wasn't what I was expecting, and not the type of book I generally enjoy reading. It was almost sci -fi because such unrealistic things happen.

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Take heed and make use of the family tree provided.

12 months ago

Although there were moments that I felt I was on a bad acid trip soaring on a magic carpet over Incest Island, I relished in this enchanting tale of the beginnings of a civilization infused with wonderous magical realism. Garcia is a truly gifted artist who turns poetry into an intricately woven tale of a blood line of legend. www.booksnakereviews.blogspot.com

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Buy This Book NOW!!!

This review is from: 100 Years Of Solitude Classic Ed (Trade Paperback)

9 years ago

An absolutely brilliant book. From start to finish, Garcia captures you in his tale. He masterfully conveys the cyclic pattern of human history, through his account of the Buendia family's story.

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A seductive myth-history

This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Trade Paperback)

3 years ago

One Hundred Years of Solitude follows a family and a town through several generations of life, death and upheaval. The overwhealming strength of the novel is Marquez' seductive writing, drawing the reader closer and closer. I could not escape the sensation that I was a child sitting at the foot of a wise and wizened elder who was telling the story of our past. It was important to me, crucial, that I listen carefully and trust everything that was said. A myth in the fullest sense of the word… + read more

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• 1 person found this helpful

Absolutely not!

This review is from: One Hundred Years Of Solitude Oprah #3 (Trade Paperback)

3 years ago

Well maybe I need help to read this book... I tried to, many times, just could not get through it. Up to this date am convinced the man must have been on drugs... if someone can tell me what is the big hype all about I would appreciate it...it gets thumbs down from me.

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Quite interesting, yet kind of tiresome

16 months ago

This book wasn't so bad after all.. The only thing is that at one point it seems like I had to push myself to read and keep reading.. because the story seems endlessly long and it seems as if never you will never finish the book. Sometimes it is hard to keep track of the events or the characters and it's quite easy to get confused, because their names are almost the same throughout the whole story and you might need to go back and read again in order to understand something.. I personally don't… + read more

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Not for everyone...

This review is from: 100 Years Of Solitude Classic Ed (Trade Paperback)

9 years ago

This book was a selection of our book club, and although the majority found it to be tough reading, I personally really enjoyed it. The flowing, conversational style of writing gives the book a personality of its own, and the mystical fantasy elements, told in such a matter-of-fact tone, give the book a warm, humourous outlook. With dozens of characters passing in and out of the narrative over the course of 100 years, attention is required to follow the action; however, the entertaining… + read more

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Perfection

This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Trade Paperback)

3 years ago

One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of those very rare novels that is written with such skill that you forget you are reading fiction, and start believing it is a history. The Buendia family that is the heart of this novel weaves its way throughout countless ages of humanity; magic makes way for science, before turning back again, as the history of the human species, replete with its loves and wars, the rebellions in both, and the truth of the human condition is explored with a poet's skill… + read more

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Fantastical !

This review is from: One Hundred Years Of Solitude Oprah #3 (Trade Paperback)

4 years ago

I started this book a half a dozen times and could never get past the first 50 pages. I couldn't have continued without Oprah's help! Oprah's website offers a synopsys that explains how to read the book. I never, in one hundred years, thought I would need directions on how to read a book! But finally I was able to put myself in the frame of mind required and now I may just read the book a second time! I loved the weirdness of the entire story and recommend it to anyone that's looking for… + read more

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• 4 people found this helpful

On "One Hundred Years of Solitude," by Gabriel García Márquez

2 years ago

Magic, we are told, does not exist. It might seem to exist when we are children, but the belief in magic is discouraged as we navigate adolescence and forgotten in adulthood. Gabriel García Márquez, in his novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967,) has presented an opening to that forgotten magic - to that connection with the archetypal myth that is within each of us. The eccentricities and utter vastness of the Buendía family experience has a home in the collective mind of humanity. Their… + read more

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More than mythical

This review is from: 100 Years Of Solitude Classic Ed (Trade Paperback)

10 years ago

One Hundred Years of Solitude is Colombia, Garcia Marquez's home country. It might better be titled 400 years of solitude as it passes through (allegorically of course) each of the major stages of Colombian history, leading up to the 1950s. Anyone who wants to understand the country and all its problems needs to read this, and then a basic history. The picture then becomes much more clear.

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