It’s not for nothing that Fidel Castro, when asked who he wanted to be reborn as, said ’’Gabriel Garcia Marquez’’. I wonder how a die-hard Jeffrey Archer/John Grisham fan like me unhesitatingly went to ’’books/Gabriel Garcia Marquez/One Hundred Years of Solitude’’ on mouthshut.com, immediately after registering myself. Was it one of the few books worth of a review utilising precious bandwidth and time ? I really don’t know.
OK, back to the topic. The novel itself somehow manages to enchant you in the midst of depression. The fatalism seeps deep inside you. Right from Jose Arcadio Buendia (The founder of Macondo) to the last Aureliano, the characters are a real treat. My pick is obviously Colonel Aureliano Buendia, who faces a firing squad, fights thirty two wars and manages to lose all of them - not that it dampens his spirits in any way!
Each character has quirks unique to him or her. Remedios the beauty, for example, drives men to their death and still doesn’t notice or care, but manages to come across as naïve and innocent.
Never in the book are dates mentioned, but you tend to notice as different eras go by. Then there are characters and events that seem to stand still over time – Melquiades (who knows everything) for example, and to an extent, Pilar Ternera.
When you read the book, it’s almost like you’re in a dark room, watching slides go by at a constant pace. No one “lives happily ever after”. A brutal, furiously paced climax had me staring at the book wide-eyed.
Six generations of fatalism leave you in a trance at the end of it all.