One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Marquez

Rating: 5+ stars

Before I read One Hundred Years of Solitude, I read somewhere that it was about the history of humanity. As I was going through it, I thought it was the history of a city or a family or an individual, but in fact it’s much more than that. The distinct impression I got when I finished the last chapter is that it talks about the beginning to the end of the human race.

The story begins with the famous line about Aureliano remembering when he first saw ice. There’s something elemental about the sentence, the military title, the mundane and its nostalgia. We catch up and figure out that scene about a quarter of the way through the book, and it seems entirely satisfying.In the moment. However, up until then we learn the foundation of the city of Macondo, from the Cain and Able-like foundational story and the self-imposed exile of José Arcadio with Úrsula.

This is one of the prototypical books of magical realism, and it reminds of ancient Greek literature, where there’s no questioning when God or a god intervenes in the real world. There is no wonder or amazement, absolutely no explanation of what’s happening. It reminds me of Kant when he talked about Homer, saying that the universal beauty of divine intervention was left to the imagination and implicit. Throughout the book, it’s clear that Marquez is drawing on allusions and metaphors to these sorts of texts.

The quote that struck me most of the whole book was this line, about halfway through: “It was then that it occurred to her that her clumsiness was not the first victory of decrepitude and darkness but a sentence passed by time.” I found that sentence perfectly illuminating because it occurs about halfway through the book but is as applicable to its context as at any other part of the book. Every phase of life, from birth to death, is shrouded in excitement, optimism and the desperation of its eventual decline.

I don’t have much more to add because I know everything has been said. On a personal note, I didn’t know how or if I should judge the characters at the beginning of the book but quickly learned how to do it. It is a fantastic book where the highs and the lows of the Buendía family will move you to your core.