Review - One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

This book is like a magic spell. I'd read fifty pages at a time without looking up like I normally do, unable to quite put it down when I'd planned to. I read it carefully, not skimming any of it. And yet, a lot of the time, I wasn't that sure whether I liked it. The writing is beautiful -- and I wish, to some extent, that I could have read it in the original, rather than a translation -- but the cyclical nature of it, with not much happening, and the lack of insights into characters' motivations at times wore on me. I'm normally one for plots and characters that you can get your teeth into, although I do know that sometimes you have to set that aside to really appreciate a piece of literature. I liked the comparison in someone else's review to the Icelandic sagas: that made sense to me.

I feel like I've somehow missed the point. I want to join the ranks who worship the book and give it four and five stars, but I can't honestly say I "really liked it". I'm not sure how much of that might be down to the translator, but considering I liked the descriptions, etc, we might have to put it down to an inability to get over the lack of heavy plot/characterisation.

In a way, I did love it, just not with the kind of love I wanted to. Does that make any sense? Probably not.