One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Read by Jen Crispin

Getting One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez was hard work. Both my sister and Mike were opposed to it making it on the list, I was the only one who insisted. Having not read the book myself, I was basing this opinion on what I had read, here and there, describing the book as influential, it's inclusion on other lists of great books, and certainly also on the recommendation of several of my friends, all of whom professed to love the book. My husband had read the book just a year before and seemed to really enjoy it. So I thought it deserved a place on the list.

Now that I've read it, I'm not so sure. The book was interesting, I enjoyed several of the characters, it addressed many grand themes in life, but.... The book moved in circles, constantly repeating itself, and the ending was unsatisfactory. I suppose that this is more like real life than most fiction with their clear plots and neat endings, but this book was anything but realistic, with its man who was always followed by yellow butterflies and young woman who ascended straight up into heaven. And although I certainly understand the point of many of the characters having the same names, it definitely made following along difficult, especially with the author's habit of jumping backward and forward in time, sometimes for no clear reason.

This isn't to say that I wasn't totally engrossed in the book for periods of time. But was it compelling enough to be on the list of best books of the century?

The book is the story of one couple, all their descendants, and the town they lived in. Unfortunately, nearly all of these descendants end up with a name that is some combination of the names Jose Arcadio, Aureliano, and Amaranta. The names themselves seem to be a curse, as each new child seems to end up with the personality and/or unfortunate fate of their namesake. With the family's matriarch so paranoid about inbreeding creating children with pigs' tales, one might think she would eventually clue in to the fact that innaming was doing far more damage to the family. But no one seems to learn anything at all in this book. The family just goes on and on, making the same mistakes over and over. I kept struggling through it, hoping for a moment of redemption that never came.

It's entirely possible that there was some point, some greater meaning to the book that I just didn't get. I am willing to concede that, but I am equally unwilling to read the book again in order to discover it. From now on when I want "magical realism," I'll turn to Salman Rushdie and Ben Okri.

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