One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967)

An account of a mythical century, the magical life of the tragic Buendía family, and the fleeting town of Macondo.

Classics Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude is that kind of book. Once upon a time, at the Royal Palm Tavern, a small white, red, and green paperback was kept behind the bar, slotted neatly between the Jameson and the Bushmills, with at least a half dozen bookmarks randomly placed, one being a beer coaster and one a dollar bill. When certain of the regulars sat at the bar, at any time of day but often in the late afternoon, the bartender would bring forth both book and a beer, so the customer could return to Macondo and continue reading the irresistible story of the Buendías. One Hundred Years of Solitude has its fierce defenders and those who soon acknowledge it's not for them. A book that writers wish they had written and can find the seeds of four hundred other novels in its pages, but can't discern how it was born. A book that must be read slowly, carefully, as if deciphering an ancient text. Go back and reread a paragraph, reread a page, and consult the family tree at the front of the book often, otherwise there's no point in reading, you're just losing time. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a story like no other, a story that can't be adequately summarized. A story of those born not of love, but in solitude. We see the town of Macondo founded by a confused passion and then a century of fearful solitude, refuge in solitude, solitude unto death, a pact with solitude, the pox of solitude, a desert of solitude, until the end when the inhabitants are seeking the paradise of shared solitude, an unfathomable solitude that separates and unites at the same time, and finally are "secluded by solitude and love and by the solitude of love." The Buendía family are fated to live in the repetition of history, a family of women "with insides made of flint" and men with "the inconceivable patience of disillusionment" and an "impermeability of affection." A family for which "time was not passing" but "turning in a circle," seen even in the repetitions and permutations of the family names. A family where some have such long lives that children and grandchildren become indistinguishable. Where the centenarian matriarch asks God if He believed "people were made of iron in order to bear so many troubles." One Hundred Years of Solitude is also a history of his country and the continent by Nobel Prize laureate, Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014). From the endless wars to the imperial banana companies, the rich and the poor, the mountains and the sea. All told in simple, slightly surreal but straightforward, alive and beautiful prose. The book is often credited as the birth of magical realism. If this is for you, it'll be a treasure that you'll remember often, from the plague of insomnia to the yellow butterflies. There are many joys and complexities to be found here, but maybe it's quite simple: "It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment."  [5★]