A Brief Book Review of a Book Most People Probably Read Years Ago

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a treasure of a book - my only regret is that I didn't read this years ago, when I first learned of it. Published originally in 1967 by an author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, the book is a sometimes heartbreaking, often wondrous, and occasionally laugh out loud story of 100 years of one family. The magic realism of ghosts, flying carpets, a levitating priest, and so much more sparkle like diamonds among the more everyday quirks and oddities of generation upon generation of the family. I think the best summary of the story comes from a quote near the end: "...the history of the family was a machine with unavoidable repetitions, a turning wheel that would have gone on spilling into eternity were it not for the progressive and irremediable wearing of the axle."

Another great pleasure was having the Audible version narrated by John Lee, who I first heard performing some of China Mieville's novels. I can't think of a better narrator for this book, and he nailed every nuance of the prose.

As an aside - before reading, I saw comments about the difficulty some people had with the book and took the cue to download the PDF of the family tree that comes with the Audible version. It didn't help tremendously as I read in audio while out and about doing other things where I couldn't refer to it, but I have a helpful background habit of keeping scores of epic fantasy characters in my head, and the times I couldn't tell one Arcadio or Aureliano from another, I let go, enjoyed the story, and usually figured it out eventually.

This is a book I'll look forward to reading again.

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