One Hundred Years of Solitude is a book where a summary would give away the story, and with it, its meaning. But to explain, Gabriel Garcia Marquez follows the mystical and miraculously uncommon, commonplace lives of a doomed family in town of Macondo, a make-believe town situated in the tropics. You get to experience their sometimes dull, sometimes incredulous lives while also receiving information on various events that are actually disguised commentary of real happenings and feelings of real people. It is a must-read book that somehow manages to confuse, bore, delight, and upset all in one go (or in many, as I had to due to the number of times I put it down due to simply feeling frustrated or tired of it).

As my short summary may suggest, I have many mixed emotions regarding this work, which given I feel such a way may give support to its supposed and acclaimed genius. Too often I felt like I was reading pointless stories, details so ridiculous that they took away any credit I could give to the story itself. Even the method storytelling gave me mixed feelings, as it is written with such nonchalant directness that you forget you are reading fiction. Yet, there are so many lines in this book that make you remember the feeling of being human and make you look up from the pages and stare at the wall in contemplation, not to mention that make you question how the author could manage to come up with so many that the ratio of clever to simple was so skewed in comparison to any other book you’ve ever read, that you can’t help but find satisfaction in it.

I personally believe another thing that has altered how I see this story is that a friend of questionable status in my life gave this book to me and that I began it about a week after moving to Honduras. Reading this as I sat on a bus with views of tropical mountains and little favela-esque houses blurred by the rain hitting the window and with a lot of emotions bottled up inside gave it simultaneously more and less meaning than it would have had I picked this up by my own curious accord in Chicago and went through it in the quiet of a library. As I read this, I could look out the window of my little Honduran apartment and can imagine the characters walking in the streets, the cloud of yellow butterflies or soldiers with metal fish following them close behind. In a way, I’ve had the opportunity to step into this book a bit more I would have otherwise. Even as I write this review now, I am watching the downpour that has consumed the greater part of this afternoon, making a little river in the streets below, imagining it might not stop for another so many years (even through it will stop any minute now and dry up by tomorrow morning).

I think this book should be read. It should be read by all different types of people in all different types of places in life and the world, as is happening given its fame, but I think those who pick it up should be warned that this book is here to tell a story, not to keep you entertained at all moments or make sense to our not-magically realistic lives.

Happy reading,
-Beppa