Book Review-100 Years of Solitude

417 Pages
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Rating: Fanciful, Awesome and Magical

"What do you say about a 25 year old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me."

Who can name that book that I just quoted? You get a prize if you can name that book, and NO CHEATING. No Googling it or anything. Anyway, like the "Mystery" book i just quoted above, One Hundred Years of Solitude has the awesome habit of telling the end of the story before it actually tells the story. This is actually a great habit of Marquez that he repeats in lots of his other books. In "Love in the time of Cholera" he talks about the heroine's husband's death that day. But before he talks about how he dies, he goes on about a parrot, and suicide and a mulatto woman and her kids and, well, you get the idea.

But I LOVED this book. BAAAAAA!!! It talks about the history of a family for 100 years and how they are just destined for destruction and solitude and sadness. The book ends with the total destruction of their line. There are no more descendants to further their family name but I think that's a good thing. Why? BECAUSE THEY KEEP NAMING EVERY KID THAT COMES OUT AURELIANO!!

One Aureliano is a soldier and he is referred to as "Colonel Aureliano Buendia" (you know, to keep him distinct from the other ba-zillion Aurelianos) and sews his wild oats all over the country. And one by one the women come and bring them his sons. . .there are 17 of them. And they are all named Aureliano.

That is just one of the crazy things that happens in this book. I really loved how the author weaved magic into the story and didn't make a big production about it. Like he will be talking about how Aureliano Segundo was upset about something, so he went into the study of his father, where the ghost of the gypsy waited for him and had a conversation with him. And it was just normal. Actually, at the end, the two last surviving members of the family are happy to be walking around with so many ghosts because they know that when they die they will not be gone but will continue to inhabit the house walking around still together. Just magical stuff like that happened all the time.

Oh, and one more thing. Hey Beth, remember when you were taking that history class (I know, I need to be more specific that that, right?) and you talked about how millions of Chinese died and how the government lied and said it never happened? Or am I making that up? Anyway, that happens in this book. There is a whole deal with a Banana Plantation being set up, and then they get mad when the workers revolt, and they call them into the town square and kill over 3,000 of them and haul them away in trains.. And then they lie and said it never happened. Not only that, they say that there never was a plantation there. And for some reason, everyone kind of accepts it, because they change the history books to say that it never happened. Of course, it makes no sense, right? That's part of the magic.

Anyway, I loved this book. It took me a really long time to finish it because I got so confused with all the Jose Arcadios and the Aurelianos and the Remedios. But mostly with the Aurelianos. Actually the women in this book usually were a lot better off then the men. They almost always lasted longer than their male counterparts. But that might've been because the men kept running off with the gypsies and to go to war. Who knows?

Anyway, I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. It's a classic. Go read it now. You'll thank me later.