I almost decided not to write a review on Gabriel García Márquez’s  Nobel Prize Award-winning novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Not because I hated it or couldn’t finish reading—neither was true. More because I wasn’t sure what I would say about it or to whom I would recommend the book. I’m not sure I have fully-developed thoughts on either, but after sitting with my ideas (and falling down some Reddit holes while fact-checking), I think I can at least write something.

“What did you expect?” he murmured. “Time passes.”
“That’s how it goes,” Úrsula said, “but not so much.”

I’m not sure how or when I first heard of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I don’t think I ever had to read anything by Márquez in literature classes in high school and to my detriment, I don’t often stray from European or American authors in my current fictional choices (working on that!). But, when I was perusing Sandmeyer’s Bookstore on Printer’s Row in Chicago this past summer, the title (and its colorful cover caught my attention). One of the blurbs on the back suggested that other than the book of Genesis (that of the Bible), Marquez’s novel should be required reading for all of humanity. As I often do with a book that piques my interest, I read the first few paragraphs and thought, why not?

At the end of the year, I finally got around to pulling it from my TBR pile. I wouldn’t say that I struggled or slogged through the novel, but I did feel like I was reading out of a compulsion to attempt to understand both the content and its value within literature.

The writing isn’t necessarily high-brow, but the way in which the plot carries from one moment quickly into another—and the fact that 30% of the characters are named José Arcadio, 40% have the name Aureliano and 20% are called Remedios or Amaranta—made the story a bit of a confusing read.

Though the plot moved chronologically forward—through, you guessed it, 100 years—the happenings in the fictional town of Macondo aren’t dated. Apparently, the plot mirrors real events in Colombian history (which I was embarrassingly totally ignorant of) and characters have brushes with the “outside world” that are grounded in real geography. Mostly, the narrative revolves around multiple generations of the Buendia family, who established a rural village that both inspires and ultimately destroys their dreams of prosperity.

I have spent very little time reading within the magical realism genre, and it took some getting used to, but I ultimately liked the bends in the time-space continuum. I grew to enjoy when the foils of nature contrasted with the foolishness of humanity. I found comfort when most of the female matriarchal characters lived to see their great-great-great grandchildren and when the ghost of a wise foreigner kindly haunted the family with his ancient transcendence. I think I didn’t love that many of the other elements of disbelief were grounded in the insanity that some people unfortunately encounter in their real lives. This constantly made me sad as I read, particularly as there were plentiful happenings of depression, mental breakdowns, incest, violence, verbal/physical/sexual/elder/child/substance abuse, anger problems, loneliness, power imbalance, greed, lying, neglect, treachery, and disillusionment throughout the story. In short, if you’re looking for a book of whimsical fantasy, this is not it.

When I took to the Internet for fact-checking this post, I discovered that many people struggle with One Hundred Years of Solitude. If you do decide to pick up a copy, the overarching pieces of advice I have to pass on to you are: don’t try to “get it,” just enjoy. If you aren’t enjoying it, put it down. Things will make more sense in the arc of the story if you allow the village of Macondo and the Buendia’s house to be characters that evolve and not merely pieces of the setting.

My final personal commentary, for whatever its worth: if this should be required reading along with the first book of the Bible, let it be a different sort of cautionary tale. By the end of Macondo’s 100 years, nothing is left but dust. So it will be with the earth, but we, to a large extent, have the power and agency to live differently than the Buendias and their insular community. What little hope, joy, purity, grace or love existed there was limited and often scrubbed out by solitary choices that had drastic communal impact. Here and now, we have the choice to do differently—to extend those bits of good to beget more good, so that however long this world exists, we can seek collective peace.

This book may be for you if you also like: magical realism; Colombia and its history; Latin America; rural villages; trains; making a house a home; solitude; cautionary tales; family history; documentaries; bananas; ice; little gold fishes; sewing machines; hammocks; traveling circuses; chasing impossible dreams.

SDG