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4.0 out of 5 stars
Fuenteovejuna did it ?, May 15 2004
How can an author keep the reader interested in his book when he gives away the ending in the first page?. Well, he needs to be an extraordinary writer, with the ability to enthrall the reader completely. Of course, not everybody can do that, but the truth is that the author of this book isn't "everybody". Gabriel García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, and he clearly deserved it. You can easily see that if you read some of the many master pieces he wrote: this is just one of them."Chronicle of a Death Foretold" has many ingredients that make it a wonderful book. In my opinion the most important ones are García Marquez's brilliant prose, and the risk he took by doing the unthinkable: bluntly telling the reader the end of the story in the first pages of the book. However, I think I should also highlight that the story itself is excellent: a wedding, a bride returned to her family in disgrace, her brothers forced by their code of honor to kill her previous lover, and announcing to all that want to hear them that they intend to do so. This is indeed the "Chronicle of a Death Foretold"... Everyone knows who is going to die, except for the intended victim and his mother. On the whole, this book is incredibly good and somewhat picturesque. The story takes place many years ago, in a provincial town with different values from those we have nowadays, and García Márquez manages to make the reader understand that. I couldn't ignore the sense of fatalism that pervades the book, probably due to the fact that something is already certain: things will turn out badly in the end. Despite that, even though we know from the first page what is going to happen, we still want to find out why did it happen. There is another pertinent question: who were the culprits?. The girl's brothers or the whole town, that knowing what they were going to do didn't stop them?. In Lope de Vega's words, I believe that "Fuenteovejuna did it"... But that is merely a personal opinion. My advice?. Buy this book, read it, and reach your own conclusions. You are highly likely to enjoy the process :) Belen Alcat
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