For the past couple weeks, I’ve been reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. I started it on the 
recommendation of a coworker, not realizing what kind of book it was. It’s been a slow few weeks, but I finally finished it, and it was pretty good.
So One Hundred Years of Solitude is literary. Like, really literary. It won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Not knowing this going in, I was kind of surprised, but it was a pleasant surprise and I think all-told I liked the book. OHYoS tells the story of the fictional Mexican town of Macondo and of the Buendia family that founded it and lived in it until the end.
OHYoS reads like an oral history. It’s very conversational and casual. Events get mixed up or told out of order. Supernatural mythology and the characters’ daily minutia are given equal weight and both are taken as fact. I don’t know if this is the best description, but to me, this book is a collection of moments. The moment Jose Arcadio Buendia first sees ice is as well told and moving as the moment his great-great-granddaughter returns to Macondo after spending her high school years in Brussels.
That’s both a positive and a negative. This book is exceptionally crafted. Each and every paragraph is beautiful and haunting and full of emotion. But there isn’t a story. I’m the kind of person who reads novels for their plot, so one without the other leaves me in a strange place. Of course I appreciate all of the artistry Marquez poured into this novel, but at some level, I’m still asking, “So what?”
I’m not even really taking issue with the style of the book. It’s well executed and enjoyable to read. I take issue more with the lack of a coherent and unifying plot. The daily lives, loves, and losses of six generations of a large Mexican family (no matter how beautifully written) is intriguing and interesting, but it’s not a story; it’s just a collection of details. Remember, this is a book that’s won all kinds of critical acclaim, so it’s possible that I completely missed the point. But I think it’s more likely that the structure just didn’t speak to me the way it does to others.
That said, there’s still a lot of good to take away from One Hundred Years of Solitude, and it did move me, so I can’t say I didn’t like it. And again, the writing itself is exquisitely crafted, so if you enjoy just solidly well written prose (as I do), you’ll enjoy this book. But these are all of the leaves. The leaves are beautiful. I just wish there were more trees to look at.
At the end of the day, I don’t know if I can recommend this book. It’s a modern classic and it’s well written, but it didn’t excite me the way the books I normally recommend do. I think that this time the decision has to be up to you. Do you want to read it?
To see the full list of books that I’ve read for this project click here.
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