Books : One Hundred Years of Solitude (Oprah's Book Club)
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 863
EAN: 9780060740450
ISBN: 0060740450
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 464
Publication Date: January 20, 2004
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: January 20, 2004
Sales Rank: 16919
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world, and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career.
The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.
Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility -- the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth -- these universal themes dominate the novel. Whether he is describing an affair of passion or the voracity of capitalism and the corruption of government, Gabriel García Márquez always writes with the simplicity, ease, and purity that are the mark of a master.
Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. Translated into dozens of languages, this stunning work is no less than an accounting of the history of the human race.
Amazon.com Review:
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
It is typical of Gabriel García Márquez that it will be many pages before his narrative circles back to the ice, and many chapters before the hero of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Buendía, stands before the firing squad. In between, he recounts such wonders as an entire town struck with insomnia, a woman who ascends to heaven while hanging laundry, and a suicide that defies the laws of physics: A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.
"Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.
The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house."
With One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel García Márquez introduced Latin American literature to a world-wide readership. Translated into more than two dozen languages, his brilliant novel of love and loss in Macondo stands at the apex of 20th-century literature. --Alix Wilber
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Reportedly the author himself did not understand the success of this book. He said, "Most critics don't understand a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude is a bit of joke.--they take on the responsibility of decoding the book and risk making terrible fools of themselves." I'm glad to know that at least the author wasn't fooled by his mediocre work.
Throughout the book there is no uplifting or cathartic passage; the supposedly comical elements don't make you laugh; the tragic episodes don't make you cry; the style is unpolished; "magical realism" is used indiscriminately; and so are the words "solitude" and "solitary" which appear in every few pages. In the book practically everyone and everything is solitary. It's a red-tag sale of Solitudes. Yet, their solitude is merely circumstantial. It is not the type of haunting or ennobling solitude you find in Kafka's or Camus' work. Even in "Hijo de hombre" (Buenos Aires, 1961) by the contemporary Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos, different characters from an impoverished village carry their true cross of solitude silently and bravely without even being aware of it.
The book is worth reading only for the purpose of pondering why it has gained such popularity and acclaim.
Rating: -
Is the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the raving reviews here. And to prove it see the review by Ann Pate "Annie Pate". Kind of remind me of Yoko Ono selling John Lennon underwear, all you get is the name and dirty laundry. I will bet my bottom dollar that most people only read this because it was on Oprah's reading list.
Rating: -
After 4 years, 2 readings, a wasted week of my life, and feeling like a moron who sees glass while everyone else sees diamonds, I finally understand One Hundred Years of Solitude. In an interview, Marquez stated essentially that most reviewers don't realise the book is an inside joke. Bingo. If I interpret this waste of paper and ink as a parody of the Seven Deadly Sins then I can understand why Marquez wrote it. I hated this book but now, just like the dinner host who pours Costco champagne into a Dom Perignon bottle knowing his guests won't know the difference, I can at least get a laugh out of it.
Rating:  -
It's so disappointing, not to mention depressing, to read the negative reviews of this book on line here. We are speaking of one of the dozen finest books of the twentieth century. The failure is not the book's. I encourage all of you to try again--let the book lift you.
Rating: -
This book was good, but at some times it was hard to follow. This novel was difficult to keep straight. It run the gauntlet from comedy to tragedy and love to death to war and everything in between witch made it very emotional. This book was also a kind of history textbook witch is ok if history is in your blood but it is not in mine. Irregardless it was emotionally satisfing. But it could have been improved if it could have been simplified. When you finish the book, don't be surprised to find yourself stepping out of a dream and back into the real world. Only in the mind of the master can a wounded arm turn into a field of butterfiles. If you like this book, you might want to try Marquez's new autobiography.
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