Throwback book review: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Previously reviewed: 2 August 2017
Rating: 2/5

It’s time to jump into another throwback book review, turning our attention to one of the most—if not the most—difficult books I have read.

And before I get too far into it, please excuse the condition this book is in. I believe there was an unfortunate accident on a train that involved a sudden stop and someone falling over (aka. me), resulting in the front being torn.

Originally titled Cien Años de Soledad, Gabriel García Márquez’s book was one I picked up as part of one of my university subjects to read, analyse and produce a literary analysis essay on.

What began as a challenge I thrust upon myself turned into quite the journey, and it is burned in my mind as a book that introduced me to the world of magical realism, and a text I will never pick up and read again.

So, this is the perfect throwback book review as I get to look back and relive my trauma while sharing it with you.

​Before I get into it, I do also want to note that this is one of those historically significant books that has huge depth, and there is every chance I’m going to analyse or refer to something incorrectly due to the time that has passed since I read this book. I apologise in advance if I refer to something incorrectly.
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Now, Let’s get into it.

I want to preface this throwback book review by providing some context as to why and how I came to find myself reading this book. As mentioned earlier, a university subject I was taking required the group to read and analyse a post-colonial text, or a text written by a non-Anglo-Saxon author. We were given a list of the books we could read, which included texts like The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara and The Color Purple by Alice Walker. And, of course, One Hundred Years of Solitude was on that list.

Here’s the kicker: when receiving the list of books, my tutor strongly encouraged that no one pick One Hundred Years of Solitude due to its complexity, noting that—with the time we had—it would be difficult to read the book and effectively analyse it for the essay.

If there’s one thing you may come to learn about me: when someone says “hey, I think you might struggle doing that”, I’m always up for the challenge. It’s not the first time I had been given similar advice from a teacher. Back in my final year of high school, one of the essays (I think it may have been one of the higher percentage essays we had to complete for our grades) involved students taking two books and doing a comparative literary analysis on them.

Again, students received a list of books, and there were some books that were recommended against. I decided I would read and compare 1984 by George Orwell and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. To cut a long story short, I was recommended not to do that due to the complexity and time I had, but I did any way.

History repeating itself, in a kind of way.

And, for those who are wondering, I got pretty high grades on both these essays, so like… you know. Challenge not only accepted but delivered very well, if I don’t say so myself!

Anyway, one key lesson I learned in all that is sometimes it is best to listen to your tutors because it was hard.

One Hundred Years of Solitude gives an insight into post-colonialism in Colombia. It’s regarded to be a difficult text to read, both in its style and its subject matter, and is a pinnacle text that popularised the style known as magical realism.

It’s a story that follows the Buendia family in the fictional village of Macondo, and is a record of events that occur from the founding of the village to—you guessed it—100 years after.

It’s written with an omniscient narrator. Now, you know I’m a lover for omniscience, but I most certainly was not a lover of it in this instance. Why? We’re guided to see the perspectives of all the Buendia family members, which there are many, and just to make it all the easier, they all have repeated names and it’s never clear when you shift from one to another.

What I can appreciate about this, however, is what it’s meant to represent. By repeating names throughout the generations of the Buendia’s, it’s emphasising the cyclical nature of life. If there’s one thing about this book that sticks in my head is the whole idea of ‘revolutions’. Now, this will be a huge simplification, but ultimately a revolution is a full circle. You start at one point, go through a motion, and end up back where you began.

A cycle. A rotation. A generation.

As we watch the Buendia family move along this storyline, we find the younger family members thinking and acting similarly as their parents or grandparents, and their actions result in similar consequences. The repetition of history, so to speak.

Speaking of history, while a fictional town, Márquez does parallel the story to some hugely historical moments in Colombia—such as the Banana Massacre—highlighting the post-colonial elements of this story.

So, with those concepts in mind, it’s a pretty significant book to read, but one area that can’t be missed to talk about—which I mentioned earlier—is the style in which it’s written: magical realism.

Magical realism is this middle-ground between the real and the fantastical. It distinguishes the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ in the story, or as some analysts call it the ‘first-world’ and ‘third-world’.

It takes things we may classify as normal—say ice—as something that is classified or viewed as an extraordinary invention, and it will be described in a whole lot of detail as such. Then, in contrast, a scene where someone floats off with the washing and disappears forever is framed almost as if it’s normal, like it’s something that just happens and everyone accepts it, and there’s not a whole lot of time given in the story to that scene.

It’s through this that the reader sees the significance of colonialism. The people of Macondo only know what they themselves have experienced, so when foreigners come along with their ice and the like, it’s extraordinary and different, and therefore magical in their eyes.

It is this separation from the familiar that can cause some difficulty in reading this text.

It’s not just the ‘extraordinary inventions’ like ice that convey the magical realism in this text either—it’s also the staggered timeline.

​We begin the story with the perspective or Aureliano Buendia, the son of the founder of Macondo, and he looks back at his time as a child. It then diverts to the perspective of Jose Arcadio Buendia, the founder of Macondo, and then later it goes back to when Macondo was first discovered.

These jumps through time and perspective, particularly when it’s not obviously clear, makes this book challenging to know what part of the timeline you’re reading, adding to the layers of difficulty when reading this book.

Or, at least, that’s how it felt for me. I’m sure there are people out there that love this book to death and its layers of complexity and symbology, and how it all comes together in the way it does.

It is a complex book with a whole lot of depth, and I can appreciate that. A lot can be learned from it, and it is powerful in portraying the destruction that occurs from colonialism. Like many other post-colonial texts, this book is a powerful one that provides a perspective that might be missed or unrecognised in western societies.

And, ultimately, this book's dislocated style of magical realism is what popularised the style for other writers, making it a hugely influential text for a multitude of reasons.

With that in mind, what did I like? Look, I’ve rated this book a 2/5 for a reason—it’s not a book I’m jumping up and down about with excitement for people to read it. Did I enjoy it? No. But, was it an effective story? Absolutely.

One Hundred Years of Solitude enlightened me to the style of magical realism, a style I’d never been exposed to before—or at least if I had (it’s possible I’ve forgotten), not in a way like this.

I can also appreciate the techniques used in the text as well as the themes, symbolism, and what the book represents. Reading a story of 100 years of one family where names, actions and decisions are repeated was a way of truly emphasising how history is so easily repeated, and honestly, while confusing at times, it was really powerful too.

And, if there’s one thing I do really like about this book, is how it depicts colonialism. I was truly in awe of the power in some scenes, and the subtleness of the progress of change and destruction shifting to an all-consuming wave was really impressive.

An example of a huge paragraph with no breaks.

However, what didn’t I like? It would be very easy for me to sit here and just say that I “just didn’t like it”, but there’s a bit more to it than that. 

Yes, the book is challenging, but I can find a lot of joy in challenge. The story and its themes are challenging, and they’re supposed to be, but that’s not what I didn’t like.

The main reason I didn’t like this book, and what was the most challenging part about it, was the structure of how it was written. We’re talking about a book where a single paragraph can last for multiple pages. Without breaks in the text, it’s really overwhelming to read, particularly with the amount of information provided in each, and how important it is to soak in and understand that information.

Taking the dry text, staggered timeline and quick (and sometimes unclear) changes in perspective with eye-watering long paragraphs meant it was just… not a great time in reading it.

This could have been the most exciting, plot-twisty story and I still would have rated it low because no one's eyes deserve to have to deal with these pages and pages of no text or line breaks.

Ultimately, this book will go down in history for me as the most difficult book I have ever read. This book took me around two or more months to read, probably longer if I'm being honest.

It requires a lot of time and focus to really understand and take in what it’s trying to say. I would absolutely recommend taking your time with it because it’s critically important to understand what it’s trying to say otherwise you’ll miss the significance of it.

If you want to give yourself a challenge, read a powerful and significant post-colonial text, or experience and learn more about the style of magical realism, then I would recommend this book. It’s one of those books that, even though I don’t rate it highly, it’s still a book I think people should take the time to read to open their minds to this style of writing and to the way colonialism is depicted.

That draws the end and closure of this throwback book review about One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, and honestly, looking back at my old review and bringing it back to life now has really opened my eyes to how it is still burned in my brain.

I know this only scratches the surface of this book, and I don’t remember all the detail of it, so there’s every chance I’ve misinterpreted something or forgotten something, but it is still one that I have big feelings about due to what it shifted in my brain—for good or for bad!

Have you ever read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez? Did you feel the same as me, or did you experience it differently? Is it one of your favourite books? Let me know in the comments as I would love to hear about other’s experiences with this book!