Exquisite work of magical complexity and infinite beauty!

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	• One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez HarperCollins, 2003 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 446 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Exquisite work of magical complexity and infinite beauty!

One hundred years of solitude is a work of genius. Marquez takes us through the lives and times of atleast six generations of Buendia family, weaving one magical imagery over the other, layers and layers of fantasy build into characters and daily reality. The writer is a poet, with his metaphors taking the center stage and creating a marvellous world of miracles and half-truths, of lies that defy several laws of physics and yet are amusing and interesting.

His novel is like a river flowing backwards from the ocean, and likewise he traces the trajectories of all its tributeries, rather mulls over the genesis and fall of each one, and describes all the floods, draughts, tides, swells and ebbs, in an continuous stream of highly imaginative narrative. Maybe my review is written in a rather unoriginal copy of the style of Marquez, and might appear full of long sentences. The same style in hands of this master sees flowering of an amazing piece of literature. It is rich in literary, scientific and philosophical meanderings, its full of several forms of life, each form of life is swamped by the overwhemling current of times, each generation discovers for itself love, lust, intrigue, tastes and temptations, talents and tempests.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez never ceases to amaze me, every sentence is a work of art. The book is sufficiently complex to keep one engrossed for weeks. Most pages are too mindboggling to be handed more than a few at a time. He supplies your imagination with so much matter that you can almost sense your brain cells seething with creativity or to say the least a pleasant confusion and agitation. The book is full of mysteries and laughter, massacres and births, people who have same names, flying carpets, Sanskrit, alchemists, wars, women who live to hundred years of age, bastards, failed and flourished businesses, and every imaginable occupation that can be thought of in a small time AND MUCH MUCH MORE. Read it!

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The 4th of July

If the 4th of July was every day, day in and day out, I think we would all get pretty dang sick of fireworks. That pretty much describes how I feel about Marquez and this book; it is a parade that lasts hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages, and an endless display of literary aesthetic achievements.

If, however, you can remember back to the days of the "Where's the Beef?" ads, you might understand my irritation at a flawlessly written novel that lacks a cohesive idea - even a thread of one - to unify all the beauty contained therein. Is this book a masterpiece? Undoubtedly, for its perfection of style and flavor. Could it have been more? Could Marquez have added substance to his style? Much more?

Sadly, yes.

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Read This Book!

If you like James Joyce, Salman Rushdie or any kind of poetry you must read this book. It is an easy, accessible and exciting read. It is an incredible, magical work that truly deserves every accolade it gets.

Beautiful writing

Marquez's writing is gorgeous and poetic - a mix of humor and sombre reality that captured me immediately.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

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