One Hundred Years of Solitude

• 10 July 2009 at 13:21
• Music, cinema, TV, books...

To prepare my trip to Latin America, I read South American authors. I started with One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. It's quite a long book and given that I read very slowly, it took me ages to finish it. This book is regarded as a major work in the litterature of Latin America and it's partly thanks to it that the author received a Nobel prize.

Personally, I thought it was a nice reading, very clever to explain and relate the characters' routines, obsessions and superstitions, but it didn't think it was extraordinary. It's the story of this family who funds a village and we follow the story of the several generations coming after. It's quite confusing by the way because many characters bear the same names. There is talk of alchemy, revolutions, incest, divine ascension... All these unrelated elements mix to create this nice but... meaningless story. The end clearly confirms this feeling.

Ironically, García Márquez never really understood why this book in particular got so famous. He even said:

Most critics don't realize that a novel like One Hundred Years of Solitude is a bit of a joke, full of signals to close friends.

Somehow, it reassures me that he should say that!

I would like however, to share an excerpt, among others, that I liked:

Actually, Remedios the Beauty was not a creature of this world. Until she was well along in puberty Santa Sofía de la Piedad had to bathe and dress her, and even when she could take care of herself it was necessary to keep an eye on her so that she would not paint little animals on the walls with a stick daubed in her own excrement. She reached twenty without knowing how to write or write, unable to use the silver at the table, wandering naked through the house because her nature rejected all manner of convention. When the young commander of the guard declared his love for her, she rejected him simply because his frivolity startled her. "See how simple he is," she told Amaranta. "He says that he's dying because of me, as if I were a case of bad colic." When, indeed, they found him dead beside her window, Remedios the Beauty confirmed her first impression.

"You see," she commented. "He was a complete simpleton."

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