Another of my past Reviews. This review was a difficult one to write – I had just finished the book, and I was trying to write this in a very convuluted, long-drawn, wordy way: much like the way the book is. Except that I dont write that brilliant :). Two years hence, I have corrected an awful lot of mistakes that I got carried away with the first time. I didnt want to rewrite this completely because that would take away the spirit I wrote the review with, however bad it is.
After a 150-200 pages or so I had given up on the book. It was almost as if I had been reading a monologue of disjointed events, told in an uneven time, set in an indistinguishable period, played by a variety of characters named similarly to each other, and a cornucopia of a series of events making no sense. However old habits die hard, and thankfully I decided to finish the book. 15 days ago I set out to complete the journey of the Buendia family. After a fortnight, I was still left in middle with 2 generations of Accordio and Aurelianos and their meaningless, miserable, happy-sad existence. Yesterday however, after a decision to finish the journey, led me to stay put on my bed, in solitude, to travel the rest of journey with the family, in search of that end which had tired me out, to find what happened at the end of it, and maybe try to understand why everyone who reads this book calls it a classic, perhaps also try to make sense of how, when, where, and what the book implied, and in doing this understand the hidden brilliance, the atrocious sexual innuendos, the comic-tragic tragic-comic events spanning a hundred years, that occur in this book, maybe in search of solitude.
After 500 pages at end, I read the events that bought up the book and how Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote this in almost poverty state. I couldn’t help but also notice how Gabriel himself becomes a character and friends the Buendia Family, or when Gabriel creates an allusion of his son and daughter in the book. The striking secret in the family, the secret parchments, the three unknown men, the lost treasure, the hidden love, the emptiness of closed windows, the warmth of open windows, the string of bad lucks, the ironic predictions between the beginning and end of that of the chestnut tree and dragging ants, to the instant where one sees his future the moment it were to take place, all of this creates an exposition that leaves you stunned in silence for a few moments; Its all that and more in the multitude of hundred years that span this book.
In a sense, which hundred years was the author talking about, perhaps, is a mystery left to the reader. For the hundred years begin with a mention of Francis Drake who attacked Rioacha in 1500s, to the modern day planes, perhaps meaning a time frame from anywhere between 1600s to 1900s a time scale suggesting a scale of hundred years spanning multiple centuries. That’s probably the first of its kind which the book offers. The supernatural events, the ghosts of forefathers, the gypsies, the birth of a city, the endless rain, the endless sunshine, chocolate elevating father – the effect can be best described as amalgamation of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22’s madness with Salman Rushdie’s imaginary worlds. They give rise to a term which probably the author who published his work well before the above mentioned authors and inspired them and not otherwise, must take the honors for coining the words Magic Realism
It’s a mystical world of Macondo, where the story ends, but then not without weaving an intricate picture of the birth of the place, the hustle bustle of the village, which turns to town, which turns to city, a developing place, unsafe place, finding itself destroyed by years of rain, and then years of sunshine, and more perhaps, the solitude it had when it was first discovered. It weaves with it, an intricate tale of a family spanning 6 generations, each one having a common names of their fore-fathers, and with the name, the common fate. The six generations go through a life of pure love, fear, superstition, incest, identity crisis, self evaluation, loneliness, and phases of solitude, in a circle, as an irony perhaps to indicate that history repeats itself; Similar mistakes are made, and though a prediction exists to remind them of past history, it awaits till the moment where history ceases itself, that you finally realize when history was just about to beginning to be understood, it ends, almost tragically
Through the expense 6 generations, I was taken through a maze of stories which went around in circles to come to an end. Sometimes the multiplicity in different perspectives to the same incident made for a confusing, and at times boring read too, but offered clever handling of the incidents, to the point that they made you wonder how the author managed it. At one instant, several incidents happen at the same time retold at different intervals at different time periods and written in a way so coherent, that only if you realize you as a reader is going through the same phase as the Buendia, that is, you too like him went around a circle to come to the same point, will actually be able to really appreciate how well developed particular incidents are. Don’t worry if you get the lost coming back to the same point of the story from different ends, you will always, as I did, meet a crossroads in stories to remind you where you where.
As if this were not enough, you will be taken to a world where almost anything could happen at any given time, but might mean nothing at all eventually A world where non-accepted norms of society seem absolutely normal, to the extent of being a matter of fact. Gabriel not only uses his past experiences of his life to tell the tale, but creates an illusionary world of Macondo, almost like a Malgudi, which he uses in other stories too, however, this being the life of Macondo as it were. One hundred years spans more than anything else, and not only will require you to read it in as it is, in solitude, but will also expect you to be a part of life at Macondo, to see the mirage of events yourself.
To return to that indelible question that I asked myself at the beginning whether this book is a classic Maybe as I write these words, do I also realize it, it is.