Customer Reviews

Collected Stories

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most incredible writers I have ever encountered. He is a profound storyteller. In fact, his work is like a beautiful Magritte painting filled with surreal images. I marvel at the translator. I can't imagine translating "Eyes of a Blue Dog." How on earth was he able to translate such a complicated story? It's incredible! The other stories are amazing as well. My favorites are "Big Mama's Funeral" and "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings." Each story has a special dose of magical realism. I look forward to reading other books from this author. I highly recommend this book.

Marquez is amazing. I've read other writings of his before, including the "One Hundred Years of Solitude," but these stories totally stunned me. Marquez paints a colorful and magical world around you. His stories flow like a river, you go with the flow unable to stop till you get to the end, and at the end he leaves you thirsty for more.

Marquez is an artist, and his stories are colorful, screamingly colorful pieces of art...

This collection of twenty six stories by Nobel Laureate Garcia Marquez was first published as a whole in 1984, although the stories were previously published in three separate volumes. As a consequence, two translators are credited here: Gregory Rabassa for the stories from EYES OF A BLUE DOG and THE INCREDIBLE AND SAD TALE OF INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND HER HEARTLESS GRANDMOTHER, and J. S. Bernstein for the stories from BIG MAMA'S FUNERAL. Both scholars and avid followers will appreciate the chronological ordering of these tales as well as the dating of first publication from 1947 to 1972 to see the progression of a much heralded talent.

As befitting the work of a master, every story is wonderfully told, with deft touches that make each memorable. Many, particularly the early stories, deal with death, particularly the separation of consciousness from the physical body, and many explore the messiness of love. Several combine the two. In "Death Constant Before Love," a politician suffering from a terminal disease falls in love with a girl given to him as a political favor. "The Third Resignation" tells the tale of a seven year old boy who falls into a coma and then grows up in a coffin in his mother's house. Three times, he resigns himself to death. "There Are No Thieves In This Town" chronicles the foolishness of a man who steals three billiard balls from a local pool hall and who loses his wife and unborn child for it. Always, Garcia Marquez's exception talent for storytelling carries these tales alone with a romantic and mystical eye for human vulnerability. His style is never rushed, always lingering over the moment, which gives even the shortest stories the feel of a novella. Not all these stories embrace the magic realism for which the author is famous, although the reader will emerge bewitched all the same.

With this book, I did what I haven't done with any other book before. I read the first story (The Third Resignation) immediately followed by the last story (The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother). The stories are arranged in chronological order and I could see the effect of time on the writer immediately. It was a journey from the completely inscrutable to absolute magic. I don't mean to say that the earlier stories are in any way inferior to the later ones. They take a little getting used to.

True to the Marquez trademark, almost all these stories have one or more magical women--sometimes she's a mute girl, sometimes she's the the quintessential opportunist, sometimes a helpless mother. Sometimes she's at the forefront of the plot, deciding the course of the story. Sometimes she merges with the background, letting things take their own course. Whatever her role, she has this uncanny ability to attract. Marquez is a painter who uses words instead of colors. If the translated pieces evoke such vivid imagery, I wonder what the originals would do. Wish I knew Spanish.

To the reader who is not used to the trademark "inscrutable" Marquez writing, I suggest that he/she read this book back to front. The initiated will enjoy either way, as long as it's cover to cover.

Here gathered together in a fine translation are stories spanning twenty years that demonstrate beyond argument the genius of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "Magical realism" has become a cliche, but inimitable tales like Big Mama's Funeral show its enduring worth. The achievement is the blending of the spiritual with the spatial and, as one reviewer put it, "the concretization of real magic". No one story stands out. Gabriel Garcia draws one into a universe of enchanted shanties, talismans and immortal hope. As a short story writer, for this reader, his skill approaches O. Henry and Hemingway. What more can one say? Come to the feast! Spare an hour or two with the Supreme Pontiff, the guava queen, the coconut queen, the kidney-bean queen and the 225-mile-long string of-iguana-eggs queen!

Here in one volume you will have 26 stories in excellent English translations which preserve the aesthetic simplicity of the original Spanish...it would be impossible to give a commment on all the great stories here. The reader will have glimpses of Macondo here and there. the stories I enjoyed the most were in the third section of this book. "A Very Old Man with enormous wings", "the Handsomest Drowned Man In the World" and "...Erendira...." All bear Marquez's signature simple style, with the elements of magical realism...it is a collection to enjoy time and time again...