I was inspired to read this after seeing it on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. I've only read about 53 of the recommended books so far, so long, long way to go (though I would never be able to read all of them ... time would be a problem obviously, but also, I can tell, that some of them would scare me half to death, and require liberal amounts of tea, and a copy of Wind in the Willows, to put right .. horror and psychological thrillers are not my thing).Synopsis: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Pipes and kettledrums herald the arrival of gypsies on their annual visit to Macondo, the newly founded village where Jose Arcadio Buendia and his strong-willed wife, Ursula, have started their new life. As the mysterious Melquiades excites Aureliano Buendia's father with new inventions and tales of adventure, neither can know the significance of the indecipherable manuscript that the old gypsy passes into their hands. Through plagues of insomnia, civil war, haunting's and vendettas, the many tribulation's of the Buendia household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember it's existence and only one will discover the hidden message that it holds.
Review: It was hard to get into at first, despite the intriguing first line quoted in the synopsis. All the men of the Buendia family were either called Jose Arcadio or Aureliano, and this pattern repeats and repeats (with slight variations) through six generations. Luckily there is a family tree at the beginning of the book, which I referred to for the first few chapters, after that I got to know each individual through their character traits and particular brand of insanity.
I loved the magical realism of the book, you learn to expect the unexpected all the time. The priest does chocolate fuelled levitation's, there are magic carpets, characters that are dead still drift through the house, one of the girls suitors is perpetually surrounded by a swarm of yellow butterflies, you can tell where he's been even if you haven't seen him. Remedios 'the beauty' is so beautiful and good that one day whilst folding some sheets in the garden she simply ascends into the sky and to heaven .. waving as she goes. There is also a travelling gypsy called Melquiades who is a magician. After he dies his spirit lives at the Buendia house and is revealed to some of the descendants as they try to decipher the crumbling manuscripts. All these wondrous events are commonplace to the people of Macondo, and yet they are utterly captivated by magnets, telescopes, false teeth and ice!.
It's very mysterious. We are told at the beginning that the world was so recent that many things lacked names, so it sounds almost biblical but then during the hundred years we see the arrival of the railway at Macondo.
However much the children are separated, sent away or educated, they all invariably end up repeating the mistakes of their descendants. It's like a perpetual wheel in motion, just when you think they've broken free of the past and moved on something happens to drag them back. Most of them have violent, untimely and downright bizarre deaths.
It was surreal and a challenge but one I ultimately enjoyed and I look forward to reading his Love in the Time of Cholera.
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