'One hundred years of solitude' reviewed

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One hundred years of Solitude. The title itself is intriguing and gets you to read what Gabriel Garcia Marquez has in mind. Once you start reading he takes you through a gamut of emotions and there will be times when you would wonder why you are still reading it. Almost feels like a hundred years. No it never bores you but it slows down the ambient time. You tend to read it very slowly, trying to grasp every nuance, a herculean task but in hindsight it was fun. It is a book that is Fantasy bordering on reality. All fiction is based on things the author has experienced some time or the other. But this beats it all! It is fiction but the thoughts are so real that it reminds me of the times I have sat thinking of ‘what if….’

It all begins in ‘Macondo’ ‘ …a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs.’ This will give you an idea of what to expect or so you think. Gabriel is full of surprises. The book is full of quotable thoughts as he goes on to describe the qualities of a leader, the gullibility of the common man, his greed for money and power and the fear of the unknown that is set in primordial situations.

The book grips you and has you thinking hard as you slip back to today and wonder what has changed.

The quotes below will give you an idea of what to expect when you pick up this book to read. These are quotes picked at random and I will just give a couple as the book itself is a quote that is worthwhile.

‘…he would sit in the street door as long as the mosquitoes would allow him to. Someone dared to disturb his solitude once.
“How are you, Colonel” he asked in passing.
“Right here,” he answered. “Waiting for my funeral procession to pass.”’

“He resigned himself to being a womanless man for all his life in order to hide the shame of his uselessness”

This is a book that portrays the birth, life and death of a civilisation.

This review is a mere attempt to explain what the book is about. You have to read it to experience it.

Yes, it is an experience and once you finish reading it, any time you are feeling bored, just pick up the book, open a random page and read. It will be time well spent.




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