Thursday 15 March 2012

One hundred years of solitude

I've been looking forward to reading this one by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But at the end I'm left with mixed feelings. This is an elaborate family saga through about 6 generations living all in the same house but each in solitude due to their obsessions, quirks, ghosts and fixations. As ever, Marquez creates a magic-realist world where ghosts and impossible events exist without apology; it is beyond the suspension of disbelief but so beautifully and poetically written that you can enjoy the language without caring if it's believable.
It is a cold reading experience, with characters who are not designed to be related to, but an enjoyable one all the same.