Collected Novellas (Paperback)

'Leaf Storm' is known as the first novella published by Gabriel García Márquez. And from this debut is possible to see how big he would become one day. This book tells a very simple story that acquires multiple levels as it is told.

After the death of an infamous doctor of Macondo his only friends, this friend's daughter and her son gather to the funerals. The dead man is known as the devil and everyone hates him. His death made the city very happy. As the story is unfolded, we learn why he's so hated and how come the threesome ended up there to mourn him.

Using multiple points of views, Gabo gives the three protagonists chances to speak to themselves and we can find out how dreadful is to each of one be there. The writer is able to switch the point of view, and also the language --after all, a little boy does not speak as an old man. This is one of the remarkable qualities of this wonderful novella.

This is the very first time that the imaginary place Macondo appears in Gabo's story and it became a seminal place of his stories --among them the masterpiece 'A Hundred years of solitude'.

'No One Writes to the Colonel,' on the other hand, is a truly excellent story. It's a slow, meditative piece with very little action, chronicling a month or so in the life of the title character and his wife in a stagnant Colombian town as he waits in vain for the pension, which he has been owed for fifteen years, to arrive in the mail. Although it's a subdued story saturated with sorrow and regret, it also features a strong undercurrent of hope which cannot be extinguished. The Colonel is an inspiring character, and, after One Hundred Years of Solitude, his story is my favorite thing I've read by Garcia Marquez. Apparently there's been a movie made of it, but I have no desire to see it.

'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' is also very good. It tells of the events surrounding and leading up to a brutal murder which ultimately implicates an entire town. Featuring the recollections of dozens of characters who were involved in the event, peripherally or seriously, it weaves a mesmerizing web of small events that all happen just the wrong way. The death is indeed 'foretold;' it could easily have been prevented by just about anyone in the story, yet somehow, no one does. In spite of knowing what's going to happen from the beginning, the story remains riveting, and even suspenseful, throughout. Don't miss it.

This volume is certainly a must-own for Garcia Marquez fans. Combined with Collected Stories, it includes the entire body of his early short fiction--so don't buy Leaf Storm and Other Stories, No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories, Innocent Erdendira and Other Stories, or Chronicle of a Death Foretold. They're redundant. No sense flinging money out windows, eh? Cheers!