Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
The opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude gives some hints of what’s to come although not all the hints are apparent untilafter you’ve read a lot more:
· This is magical realism.
· The author has no qualms about giving the reader spoilers.
· The author has no qualms about misleading the reader in those spoilers.
· The author knows how to hook his reader’s attention.
I found this book easy to read but not an easy read. Easy to read because the flowing, intimate narrative effortlessly carries the reader away to a strange and dreamlike world where the prosaic mingles freely with the magical. Not an easy read because it requires much more concentration from the reader than do most books; just keeping track of the entangled Buendia family, around whom the story evolves, with their convoluted and often incestuous relationships, is challenging enough (if your edition does not have a family tree in the front then do find one to download, seriously!).
This is magical realism at its best, filled with a seamless mix of the ordinary and the extraordinary, the mundane and the exceptional, the magical and the prosaic. All presented so casually that it’s just taken for granted – so the priest can levitate? Of course he can, what do you expect?
One afternoon the boys grew enthusiastic over the flying carpet that went swiftly by the laboratory at window level carrying the gypsy who was driving it and several children from the village who were merrily waving their hands, but José Arcadio Buendía did not even look at it. “Let them dream,” he said. “We’ll do better flying than they are doing, and with more scientific resources than a miserable bedspread.”
Arthur C Clarke famously said ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ and throughout earliest stages of the book there is little to distinguish the scientific from the magical. However, as the title suggests, the story spans a hundred years and, as time progresses and more and more technology comes to the fictional town of Macondo in Columbia, so the magic slowly disappears. The Buendia alchemy laboratory is replaced with the daguerreotype room and in turn that is replaced with the silver workshop. The first part of the book, despite the ominous tone of that opening sentence, is filled with magic and whimsical absurdity. These early passages reminded me strongly of Bruno Schulz’s the Street of Crocodiles with Schulz’s ‘father’ mirroring the family patriarch Jose Arcadio Buendia. As the story progresses, and the early protagonists pass on (eventually), so the magic leaks away with them, taking with it all trace and memory of that extraordinary, not to mention dysfunctional, Buendia family and the town that is little more than their reflection. The story is ultimately a tragedy.
Behind all the smoke and mirrors run many dark undercurrents. Massacres take place and are forgotten. Incest, both apparent and hidden, is common. The torrid underbelly of Macondo life is often hidden behind euphemisms – the little girls who went to bed because of hunger. Jealousies and adultery abound, and, perhaps most disturbing, though possibly historically accurate, is the love, or maybe infatuation, of one of the Buendias for a nine-year-old girl and their eventual marriage as soon as she enters puberty.
…she returned with the news that Remedios had not reached puberty. Aureliano did not consider that a serious barrier. He had waited so long that he could wait as long as was necessary until his bride reached the age of conception.
No excuses are offered for these disturbing veins; as with the magic, everything is presented in the same commonplace tone; ordinary and mundane.
Cycles recur throughout the book. The rise and fall of the Buendia family, echoed in the rise and fall of their town of Macondo, encompasses the whole story. The repeated cycle of the two male family names – Jose Arcadio and Aureliano – bring with them repeated personalities (and a devil of a time keeping them all straight in your head). The cycles of conflict, as Colonel Aureliano Buendia fights his thirty-two wars, reflect the never ending cycles of civil war that have plagued so many Latin American countries.
Another repeated theme is insanity which is possibly the real ‘pig’s tail’ incestuous mutation so feared by the matriarch, Ursula. This too is presented and dealt with in mundane manner; when the patriarch’s insanity becomes unmanageable he is simply tied to a chestnut tree and a rude shelter of palm branches built over him.
This is undoubtedly a brilliant book but one that many will (and do) hate. I loved it but will certainly need at least one re-read before having any hope of completely straightening out the whole complex tapestry of the fascinating and tragic Buendia family.
The opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude gives some hints of what’s to come although not all the hints are apparent untilafter you’ve read a lot more:
· This is magical realism.
· The author has no qualms about giving the reader spoilers.
· The author has no qualms about misleading the reader in those spoilers.
· The author knows how to hook his reader’s attention.
I found this book easy to read but not an easy read. Easy to read because the flowing, intimate narrative effortlessly carries the reader away to a strange and dreamlike world where the prosaic mingles freely with the magical. Not an easy read because it requires much more concentration from the reader than do most books; just keeping track of the entangled Buendia family, around whom the story evolves, with their convoluted and often incestuous relationships, is challenging enough (if your edition does not have a family tree in the front then do find one to download, seriously!).
This is magical realism at its best, filled with a seamless mix of the ordinary and the extraordinary, the mundane and the exceptional, the magical and the prosaic. All presented so casually that it’s just taken for granted – so the priest can levitate? Of course he can, what do you expect?
One afternoon the boys grew enthusiastic over the flying carpet that went swiftly by the laboratory at window level carrying the gypsy who was driving it and several children from the village who were merrily waving their hands, but José Arcadio Buendía did not even look at it. “Let them dream,” he said. “We’ll do better flying than they are doing, and with more scientific resources than a miserable bedspread.”
Arthur C Clarke famously said ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ and throughout earliest stages of the book there is little to distinguish the scientific from the magical. However, as the title suggests, the story spans a hundred years and, as time progresses and more and more technology comes to the fictional town of Macondo in Columbia, so the magic slowly disappears. The Buendia alchemy laboratory is replaced with the daguerreotype room and in turn that is replaced with the silver workshop. The first part of the book, despite the ominous tone of that opening sentence, is filled with magic and whimsical absurdity. These early passages reminded me strongly of Bruno Schulz’s the Street of Crocodiles with Schulz’s ‘father’ mirroring the family patriarch Jose Arcadio Buendia. As the story progresses, and the early protagonists pass on (eventually), so the magic leaks away with them, taking with it all trace and memory of that extraordinary, not to mention dysfunctional, Buendia family and the town that is little more than their reflection. The story is ultimately a tragedy.
Behind all the smoke and mirrors run many dark undercurrents. Massacres take place and are forgotten. Incest, both apparent and hidden, is common. The torrid underbelly of Macondo life is often hidden behind euphemisms – the little girls who went to bed because of hunger. Jealousies and adultery abound, and, perhaps most disturbing, though possibly historically accurate, is the love, or maybe infatuation, of one of the Buendias for a nine-year-old girl and their eventual marriage as soon as she enters puberty.
…she returned with the news that Remedios had not reached puberty. Aureliano did not consider that a serious barrier. He had waited so long that he could wait as long as was necessary until his bride reached the age of conception.
No excuses are offered for these disturbing veins; as with the magic, everything is presented in the same commonplace tone; ordinary and mundane.
Cycles recur throughout the book. The rise and fall of the Buendia family, echoed in the rise and fall of their town of Macondo, encompasses the whole story. The repeated cycle of the two male family names – Jose Arcadio and Aureliano – bring with them repeated personalities (and a devil of a time keeping them all straight in your head). The cycles of conflict, as Colonel Aureliano Buendia fights his thirty-two wars, reflect the never ending cycles of civil war that have plagued so many Latin American countries.
Another repeated theme is insanity which is possibly the real ‘pig’s tail’ incestuous mutation so feared by the matriarch, Ursula. This too is presented and dealt with in mundane manner; when the patriarch’s insanity becomes unmanageable he is simply tied to a chestnut tree and a rude shelter of palm branches built over him.
This is undoubtedly a brilliant book but one that many will (and do) hate. I loved it but will certainly need at least one re-read before having any hope of completely straightening out the whole complex tapestry of the fascinating and tragic Buendia family.
