|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
From Amazon
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 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From Library Journal
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
MANY YEARS LATER, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inventive and Enjoyable Landmark in Modern Literature,
By
This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Hardcover)
One Hundred Years of Solitude" is a compelling if challenging read. It overflows with creativity, history, magic, and characters with the same names. Yes, there are many Jose Arcadios, even more Aurelianos and more than one Amaranta in the same family, often at the same time. But, once one makes use of the character genealogy at the beginning it is not to hard to keep track of the respective characters.What makes 100 years such a compelling read is its incredible blending of the fantastical with realism. Marquez blends detailed accounts of absolutely impossible events with equally detailed accounts of completely plausible or historically known events with such equanimity of importance as to make them indistinguishable to the plot. And it works. Works better than anything written before or since that has had the label Magic Realism attached to it. The reason that this novel is so successful is threefold. First, his characters are completely charismatic, as is his writing, you will find yourself with an undeniable affection for the story from the end of the first chapter on, I guarantee it. Second, the aspects of the story brushed with magic, fully half of the novel, are perfectly done, magical happenings emerging out of everyday circumstances and being reabsorbed into everyday life fluidly and seamlessly. Third, the cutting realism of the story, accurate down to the detail balances the whimsical. A novel not to be missed, with a great ending and a wealth of well crafted circumstances written in prose that makes the heart wrenching as compelling as the beautiful, and makes the hundred year history of the Buendia family of Macondo one of the most rewarding reads available.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Exquisitely depressing,
By me (CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: One Hundred Years of Solitude (Paperback)
This book should be on your list of must-read great books. It is a long and elaborate story of unrequited love, family, and loneliness. However wonderful, it is almost morbidly depressing so for your own mental health read it when you feel strong!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful, timeless.,
By
This review is from: One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Paperback)
I first read this book in my early teens. At that time I was enthralled. It is a complete epic. Beautiful, with many lessons for our current times too - esp in the last lines. When I re-read the book, while the magic of my first reading is gone, the last lines still give me that ah to hmmm feeling. Since the first book that I owned I have bought it for numerous friends. It should be essential reading for all in schools. Whether you like it or not, it is a complete novel and covers so many aspects of humanity. Must read.On another note, I especially visited Baracoa, the place that Macondo is claimed to be modelled on. Dont know if that claim is true, or whether it was my imagination, but it did feel a wee bit eerie being there.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
|
