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Leaf Storm and Other Stories
Contains the Novella Leaf Storm: 'SUDDENLY, AS IF A WHIRLWIND HAD SET DOWN ROOTS IN THE CENTRE OF THE TOWN, THE BANANA COMPANY ARRIVED, PURSUED BY THE LEAF STORM'
As a blizzard of warehouses and amusement parlours and slums descends on the small town of Macondo, the inhabitants reel at the accompanying stench of rubbish that makes their home unrecognisable. When the banana company leaves town as fast as it arrived, all they are left with is a void of decay.
Living in this devastated and soulless wasteland is one last honourable man, the Colonel, who is determined to fulfil a long standing promise, no matter how unpalatable it may be. With the death of the detested Doctor, he must provide an honourable burial - and incur the wrath of the rest of Macondo, who would rather see the Doctor rot, forgotten and unattended.
Also contains the stories: The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles, The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship, Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo, Nabo
As a blizzard of warehouses and amusement parlours and slums descends on the small town of Macondo, the inhabitants reel at the accompanying stench of rubbish that makes their home unrecognisable. When the banana company leaves town as fast as it arrived, all they are left with is a void of decay.
Living in this devastated and soulless wasteland is one last honourable man, the Colonel, who is determined to fulfil a long standing promise, no matter how unpalatable it may be. With the death of the detested Doctor, he must provide an honourable burial - and incur the wrath of the rest of Macondo, who would rather see the Doctor rot, forgotten and unattended.
Also contains the stories: The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles, The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship, Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo, Nabo
146 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
103 people are currently reading
2673 people want to read
About the author
Gabriel García Márquez
782 books41.2k followersGabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. García Márquez, familiarly known as "Gabo" in his native country, was considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. In 1982, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
He studied at the University of Bogotá and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best-known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magical realism, which uses magical elements and events in order to explain real experiences. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo, and most of them express the theme of solitude.
Having previously written shorter fiction and screenplays, García Márquez sequestered himself away in his Mexico City home for an extended period of time to complete his novel Cien años de soledad, or One Hundred Years of Solitude, published in 1967. The author drew international acclaim for the work, which ultimately sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. García Márquez is credited with helping introduce an array of readers to magical realism, a genre that combines more conventional storytelling forms with vivid, layers of fantasy.
Another one of his novels, El amor en los tiempos del cólera (1985), or Love in the Time of Cholera, drew a large global audience as well. The work was partially based on his parents' courtship and was adapted into a 2007 film starring Javier Bardem. García Márquez wrote seven novels during his life, with additional titles that include El general en su laberinto (1989), or The General in His Labyrinth, and Del amor y otros demonios (1994), or Of Love and Other Demons.
(Arabic: جابرييل جارسيا ماركيز) (Hebrew: גבריאל גארסיה מרקס) (Ukrainian: Ґабріель Ґарсія Маркес) (Belarussian: Габрыель Гарсія Маркес) (Russian: Габриэль Гарсия Маркес)
He studied at the University of Bogotá and later worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. He wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best-known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magical realism, which uses magical elements and events in order to explain real experiences. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo, and most of them express the theme of solitude.
Having previously written shorter fiction and screenplays, García Márquez sequestered himself away in his Mexico City home for an extended period of time to complete his novel Cien años de soledad, or One Hundred Years of Solitude, published in 1967. The author drew international acclaim for the work, which ultimately sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. García Márquez is credited with helping introduce an array of readers to magical realism, a genre that combines more conventional storytelling forms with vivid, layers of fantasy.
Another one of his novels, El amor en los tiempos del cólera (1985), or Love in the Time of Cholera, drew a large global audience as well. The work was partially based on his parents' courtship and was adapted into a 2007 film starring Javier Bardem. García Márquez wrote seven novels during his life, with additional titles that include El general en su laberinto (1989), or The General in His Labyrinth, and Del amor y otros demonios (1994), or Of Love and Other Demons.
(Arabic: جابرييل جارسيا ماركيز) (Hebrew: גבריאל גארסיה מרקס) (Ukrainian: Ґабріель Ґарсія Маркес) (Belarussian: Габрыель Гарсія Маркес) (Russian: Габриэль Гарсия Маркес)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 202 reviews
July 2, 2019
This is a novella of 100 pages and six short stories by the master. The novella of the title is a strange story, essentially a fantasy. A family in a small town in Colombia has taken in two people, a young Indian woman and a man who supposedly used to be a doctor. They don’t even learn his name for five years. Every day the woman of the house cooks him grass soup. “Grass like mules eat.”
The doctor earns the animosity of the town by refusing to help seriously injured people who were shot. Later the two (the man and the Indian woman) leave for a smaller nearby house and live in complete isolation. The story is told from the man’s funeral wake at which the father, daughter and her son are the only attendees in the whole town. The mystery is what is the connection between the doctor and the grandfather that he would open his house to such a stranger?
There’s great writing: “There’s a moment when siesta time runs dry. Even the secret, hidden, minute activity of the insects ceases at that precise instant; the course of nature comes to a halt; creation struggles on the brink of chaos and women get up, drooling, with the flower of the embroidered pillowcase on their cheeks, suffocated by temperature and rancor; and they think: It’s still Wednesday in Macondo. And then they go back to huddling in the corner, splicing sleep to reality, and they come to an agreement, weaving the whispering as it were an immense flat surface of thread stitched in common by all the women in the town.”
Leaf Storm refers to the small town where a banana company moved in and gave the town a decade of prosperity. New people ‘blew in like leaves’ alone and only with a suitcase. The fruit company disappeared just as quickly and Macondo became a dying town again.
To give you an idea of the short stories, In The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, a huge beautiful man washes up dead on the beach. The women of the town and surrounding towns plan an elaborate funereal for him, much to the chagrin of the men who simply want to dump the body off a cliff.
In a Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, A filthy, wounded apparently dying winged creature appears in the farmyard. Angel or devil?
In Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles, a man sells his son to a snake oil salesman (Blacaman the Bad) as his assistant. The man is evil and constantly beats the boy. But Blacaman the Good is just as evil and gets his revenge.
Good stories.
Painting of Aracataca, Colombia, the author’s home town, renamed Aracataca-Mocondo in his honor, from cdn.colombia.com/sdi/2015
The author from resizer.shared.arcpublishing.com
The doctor earns the animosity of the town by refusing to help seriously injured people who were shot. Later the two (the man and the Indian woman) leave for a smaller nearby house and live in complete isolation. The story is told from the man’s funeral wake at which the father, daughter and her son are the only attendees in the whole town. The mystery is what is the connection between the doctor and the grandfather that he would open his house to such a stranger?
There’s great writing: “There’s a moment when siesta time runs dry. Even the secret, hidden, minute activity of the insects ceases at that precise instant; the course of nature comes to a halt; creation struggles on the brink of chaos and women get up, drooling, with the flower of the embroidered pillowcase on their cheeks, suffocated by temperature and rancor; and they think: It’s still Wednesday in Macondo. And then they go back to huddling in the corner, splicing sleep to reality, and they come to an agreement, weaving the whispering as it were an immense flat surface of thread stitched in common by all the women in the town.”
Leaf Storm refers to the small town where a banana company moved in and gave the town a decade of prosperity. New people ‘blew in like leaves’ alone and only with a suitcase. The fruit company disappeared just as quickly and Macondo became a dying town again.
To give you an idea of the short stories, In The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, a huge beautiful man washes up dead on the beach. The women of the town and surrounding towns plan an elaborate funereal for him, much to the chagrin of the men who simply want to dump the body off a cliff.
In a Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, A filthy, wounded apparently dying winged creature appears in the farmyard. Angel or devil?
In Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles, a man sells his son to a snake oil salesman (Blacaman the Bad) as his assistant. The man is evil and constantly beats the boy. But Blacaman the Good is just as evil and gets his revenge.
Good stories.
Painting of Aracataca, Colombia, the author’s home town, renamed Aracataca-Mocondo in his honor, from cdn.colombia.com/sdi/2015
The author from resizer.shared.arcpublishing.com
January 6, 2008
i will read anything marquez writes......grocery list, doodles, short story, novel.....
February 9, 2014
I have a great affection for Leaf Storm. And a great compassion for the guy who wrote it. I can see him clear as day: he's a boy of twenty-two, twenty-three, who thinks he's never going to write another thing in his life, this is his only chance, so he tries to put everything in, everything he remembers and everything he's learned about technique and literary craft in all the authors he's read. - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: El Manifesto (Bogotá, 1977)
Leaf Storm (1955) is the story of a colonel, a man of accepted aristocratic background, who finds himself in opposition with the town because he holds firm to the obligation of burying his friend, the Belgian doctor. The problem is that the doctor was despised for his 'crimes' against the townfolk of Macondo - crimes which began with his refusal to attend to the town's wounded following a political uprising. Now, he has committed the worst offense against the laws of God, that of committing suicide. The colonel seems to have been the doctor's one true friend and the only one who might have tried to understand his solemn, mysterious presence in Macondo:
The novel follows varying themes of honor, duty and shame through the points of view of the three main characters: the colonel, his daughter and his grandson. Its timeline spans all of half an hour during which the narrators flashback to events of their family life and the slowly withering town of Macondo, while giving the reader pieces of the doctor's story. The colonel reminisces over the corpse of the doctor:
What a classy, satirical way to say the man is vegetarian!
The back and forth manipulation provides the reader with puzzle pieces of the story that clearly proves a Faulkner influence. García Márquez has also borrowed a plotline similar to Sophocles' Antigone, where Antigone finds opposition to burying her brother.
Leaf Storm is García Márquez's first novel and, like his subsequent novels, it is built on memories of his childhood and his birth town of Aracataca, the model for Macondo. In Leaf Storm, García Márquez touches on the deterioration of the once-booming village.
Many of the characters are versions of real people in his family: starting with the most obvious is the colonel who is based on GGM's grandfather Nicolás; Martín is loosely based on GGM's father Gabriel Eligio; Isabel is modeled after his mother Luisa; naturally Gabriel is the little boy. The doctor is also a character from García Márquez's childhood in Aracataca, a pharmacist named Don Emilio. The list goes on.
Leaf Storm was a delightful read; an easy, vibrant narrative of rich, unusual events accented by GGM's own history. I'm in the middle of this amazing storyteller's authorized bio by Gerald Martin, which is simply fascinating.
Leaf Storm (1955) is the story of a colonel, a man of accepted aristocratic background, who finds himself in opposition with the town because he holds firm to the obligation of burying his friend, the Belgian doctor. The problem is that the doctor was despised for his 'crimes' against the townfolk of Macondo - crimes which began with his refusal to attend to the town's wounded following a political uprising. Now, he has committed the worst offense against the laws of God, that of committing suicide. The colonel seems to have been the doctor's one true friend and the only one who might have tried to understand his solemn, mysterious presence in Macondo:
I thought of his life, his solitude , his frightful, spiritual disturbances. I thought of the tormented indifference with which he watched the spectacle of his life... I thought that inside of myself I'd uncovered the mysterious force that from the first moment had led me to shelter him, and I felt the pain of his dark and stifling room like an open wound. I saw him as somber and defeated, crushed by circumstances. And suddenly, with a new look from his hard and penetrating yellow eyes, I felt the certainty that the secret of his labyrinthine solitude had been revealed to me by the tense pulsation of the night.
The novel follows varying themes of honor, duty and shame through the points of view of the three main characters: the colonel, his daughter and his grandson. Its timeline spans all of half an hour during which the narrators flashback to events of their family life and the slowly withering town of Macondo, while giving the reader pieces of the doctor's story. The colonel reminisces over the corpse of the doctor:
It's two-thirty, I think. Two- thirty on September 12, 1928; almost the same hour of that day in 1903 when this man sat down for the first time at our table and asked for some grass to eat. Adelaida asked him that time: "What kind of grass, doctor?" And he in his parsimonious ruminant voice, still touched by nasality: "Ordinary grass, ma'am. The kind donkeys eat."
What a classy, satirical way to say the man is vegetarian!
The back and forth manipulation provides the reader with puzzle pieces of the story that clearly proves a Faulkner influence. García Márquez has also borrowed a plotline similar to Sophocles' Antigone, where Antigone finds opposition to burying her brother.
Leaf Storm is García Márquez's first novel and, like his subsequent novels, it is built on memories of his childhood and his birth town of Aracataca, the model for Macondo. In Leaf Storm, García Márquez touches on the deterioration of the once-booming village.
10 years ago, when ruin came down upon us, the collective strength of those who looked for recovery might have been enough for reconstruction. All that was needed was to go out into the fields laid waste by the banana company, clean out the weeds, and start again from scratch. But they'd trained the leaf storm to be impatient, not to believe in either past or future... We only needed a short time to realize that the leaf storm had left and that without it reconstruction was impossible. The leaf storm had brought everything and it had taken everything away.
Many of the characters are versions of real people in his family: starting with the most obvious is the colonel who is based on GGM's grandfather Nicolás; Martín is loosely based on GGM's father Gabriel Eligio; Isabel is modeled after his mother Luisa; naturally Gabriel is the little boy. The doctor is also a character from García Márquez's childhood in Aracataca, a pharmacist named Don Emilio. The list goes on.
Leaf Storm was a delightful read; an easy, vibrant narrative of rich, unusual events accented by GGM's own history. I'm in the middle of this amazing storyteller's authorized bio by Gerald Martin, which is simply fascinating.
December 4, 2020
I went to my local used book store in search of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and came home instead with Leaf Storm and Other Stories, a collection of earlier writings.
The Novella, Leaf Storm, I discovered, was a precurser to the more famous work I had been looking for . In it, we are introduced to the fictional town of Macondo and some of the characters we read about in 'One Hundred Years'.
At the outset, an old Doctor dies, commits suicide in fact and nobody cares about him. In fact, the town hated him and did not want him buried on consecrated ground. Like...Yeah, they really detested him! The Colonel, his daughter and grandson, the three narrators, are the only ones who attend the Wake. Through them, we get the rest of the story. Or at least as much as the author is willing to reveal.
There is a ethereal, poetic quality in Gabo's prose - an almost dream- like, hazy state of unreality that permeates Leaf Storm and the six short stories. Magical Realism!!
The short stories:
1) the eerily breathless 'Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship' ( the entire story is one sentence) is about a boy who every year at the same time witnesses an ocean liner sink in the harbour. Everyone in the village thinks he's crazy until, as he grows into manhood, he sets out to prove them wrong
2) 'Monologue of Isabel Watching it Rain in Macondo' - after 'seven months of intense summer and scorching heat' Isabel watches the torrential rain come down with her father and stepmother until they are inundated and time seems to stop.
3) 'The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World' - we read how the discovery of a drowned man, washed ashore, transforms a small village
4) A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
- A poor couple discovers an old man lying in the mud in their courtyard, unable to move because his wings are coated in mud. Is he an Angel?
5) Blacamen the Good, Vendor of Miracles
- a young apprentice to a snake oil charlatan, after being ill-used and abused, exacts his revenge.
6) 'Nabo' - Marquez fuses subjective and objective reality in this story of a young black stable boy, a slave, who after being kicked in the head by a horse, is stuck in a time loop and refuses to move on to the afterlife.
Cool stuff.
Let's say 3.75 stars for the collection.
The Novella, Leaf Storm, I discovered, was a precurser to the more famous work I had been looking for . In it, we are introduced to the fictional town of Macondo and some of the characters we read about in 'One Hundred Years'.
At the outset, an old Doctor dies, commits suicide in fact and nobody cares about him. In fact, the town hated him and did not want him buried on consecrated ground. Like...Yeah, they really detested him! The Colonel, his daughter and grandson, the three narrators, are the only ones who attend the Wake. Through them, we get the rest of the story. Or at least as much as the author is willing to reveal.
There is a ethereal, poetic quality in Gabo's prose - an almost dream- like, hazy state of unreality that permeates Leaf Storm and the six short stories. Magical Realism!!
The short stories:
1) the eerily breathless 'Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship' ( the entire story is one sentence) is about a boy who every year at the same time witnesses an ocean liner sink in the harbour. Everyone in the village thinks he's crazy until, as he grows into manhood, he sets out to prove them wrong
2) 'Monologue of Isabel Watching it Rain in Macondo' - after 'seven months of intense summer and scorching heat' Isabel watches the torrential rain come down with her father and stepmother until they are inundated and time seems to stop.
3) 'The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World' - we read how the discovery of a drowned man, washed ashore, transforms a small village
4) A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
- A poor couple discovers an old man lying in the mud in their courtyard, unable to move because his wings are coated in mud. Is he an Angel?
5) Blacamen the Good, Vendor of Miracles
- a young apprentice to a snake oil charlatan, after being ill-used and abused, exacts his revenge.
6) 'Nabo' - Marquez fuses subjective and objective reality in this story of a young black stable boy, a slave, who after being kicked in the head by a horse, is stuck in a time loop and refuses to move on to the afterlife.
Cool stuff.
Let's say 3.75 stars for the collection.
September 6, 2023
"Believe me, colonel, I'm not an atheist. I get just as upset thinking God exists as thinking he doesn't. That is why I'd rather not think about it."
- Gabrielle García Márquez, Leaf Storm
This book contains the novella "The Leaf Storm" along with the following stories:
1. - The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World - ★★★★★
2. - A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings - ★★★★★
3. - Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Mircacles - ★★★★
4. - The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship - ★★★★
5. - Monologue of Isabel Watching it Rain in Macondo - ★★★★★
6. - Nabo - ★★★★
I need to come back and talk a bit more about it, but not now.
- Gabrielle García Márquez, Leaf Storm
This book contains the novella "The Leaf Storm" along with the following stories:
1. - The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World - ★★★★★
2. - A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings - ★★★★★
3. - Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Mircacles - ★★★★
4. - The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship - ★★★★
5. - Monologue of Isabel Watching it Rain in Macondo - ★★★★★
6. - Nabo - ★★★★
I need to come back and talk a bit more about it, but not now.
November 23, 2012
What can I say?
There is a reason that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a master. He didn’t just have a unique and powerful way of writing, he also had a unique and powerful way of seeing the world around him.
I am also reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Life by Gerald Martin. It has been a fascinating journey, reading Leaf Storm as I read about the early years of his life in Colombia and traveling in Europe, what used to be the U.S.S.R., the United States, and Cuba.
It was easy to give this book 5 stars. A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings may still be my favorite story, but the entire book got under my skin.
The brilliance of it is this: The leaf storm is the arrival of--for lack of a better term--industry to the small town of Macondo. The leaf trash are the elements of the population that the storm blows into town, leaving the residents already there feeling like outsiders.
This is presented in the prologue. What follows is so unique. It is not factual, it is like watercolor bleeding on a wet canvas. The stories sprawl into the psyches of the imagined citizens. We get their hearts and souls.
I’ve written about each of the stories on my blog www.eatingmagic.blogspot.com on the entries between October 18, 2012 and November, 19, 2012.
It is really unfortunate that this treasure has not become available for ereaders.
There is a reason that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a master. He didn’t just have a unique and powerful way of writing, he also had a unique and powerful way of seeing the world around him.
I am also reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Life by Gerald Martin. It has been a fascinating journey, reading Leaf Storm as I read about the early years of his life in Colombia and traveling in Europe, what used to be the U.S.S.R., the United States, and Cuba.
It was easy to give this book 5 stars. A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings may still be my favorite story, but the entire book got under my skin.
The brilliance of it is this: The leaf storm is the arrival of--for lack of a better term--industry to the small town of Macondo. The leaf trash are the elements of the population that the storm blows into town, leaving the residents already there feeling like outsiders.
This is presented in the prologue. What follows is so unique. It is not factual, it is like watercolor bleeding on a wet canvas. The stories sprawl into the psyches of the imagined citizens. We get their hearts and souls.
I’ve written about each of the stories on my blog www.eatingmagic.blogspot.com on the entries between October 18, 2012 and November, 19, 2012.
It is really unfortunate that this treasure has not become available for ereaders.
February 10, 2016
One novella and the rest of them pretty short stories. They were apparently written well before One Hundred Years, but the foundation is there to be seen. Macondo is introduced with the train and the banana company. There is Col. Aureliano Buendia, although as someone who's written a recommendation letter.
The novella is intense spread out over 30 minutes, but using that time to trace back the history of the characters and how they've come to be or in a few cases, not to be, in that room with the dead body.
The short stories are surreal, and have his typical supernatural elements. The Angel who's old and weak, the ship that a man keeps dreaming about, and a dead body that washes up which people adopt as their own. And a man on the verge of dying. Thrown in is another snippet from Macondo with the same characters as in 'Leaf Storm'. It's interesting to read short stories on a set of characters placed at different points. They don't necessarily say anything different, or lead anywhere but give you further insight into their lives. Isabel, for instance, sees as her husband as abstract, someone she never really believes is there. And you see more of that in the shorter story where she can't ever place his voice even though he's apparently sitting right beside her.
The novella is intense spread out over 30 minutes, but using that time to trace back the history of the characters and how they've come to be or in a few cases, not to be, in that room with the dead body.
The short stories are surreal, and have his typical supernatural elements. The Angel who's old and weak, the ship that a man keeps dreaming about, and a dead body that washes up which people adopt as their own. And a man on the verge of dying. Thrown in is another snippet from Macondo with the same characters as in 'Leaf Storm'. It's interesting to read short stories on a set of characters placed at different points. They don't necessarily say anything different, or lead anywhere but give you further insight into their lives. Isabel, for instance, sees as her husband as abstract, someone she never really believes is there. And you see more of that in the shorter story where she can't ever place his voice even though he's apparently sitting right beside her.
April 22, 2019
This short story collection contains some of the best stories by Marquez: The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings and The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship (a nod to the Hungarian sentence. Halalcsillag means death star).
Other stories like Monologue of Isabel Watching it Rain in Mocondo and Nabo appear also in the short story collection The Eyes of a Blue Dog, but they fit much better under the umbrella of Leaf Storm and the atmosphere the book creates as a whole.
Other stories like Monologue of Isabel Watching it Rain in Mocondo and Nabo appear also in the short story collection The Eyes of a Blue Dog, but they fit much better under the umbrella of Leaf Storm and the atmosphere the book creates as a whole.
February 27, 2008
I liked every single story in this book. Every story made me feel simultaneously desperate and thrilled. I love the unabashed embracing of myth and mystery, the adventurous use of language (like in "The Last Ghost Ship," a six-page story constructed of a single sentence and only one period), and the unflinching examination of the human condition. I don't know how Garcia Marquez does it, but I am so glad he does.
June 10, 2023
This was my first Gabriel Garcia Marquez book and it didn't take me long to see why he's a Nobel winner. I can see why readers fall in love with his books. He instantly grabs your attention. The first sentence is "I've seen a corpse for the first time." Who wouldn't want to read more after reading that awesome opening line? I'm looking forward to reading more of his work, especially One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera.
August 24, 2009
I particularly enjoy García Márquez in short segments, which is why I find all of his short stories to be absolutely amazing...particularly if one has lived in or visited South America.
July 2, 2010
This is one of my favorite collections, primarily because it includes the story, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings". That story has been one of my favorites since I was young.
December 24, 2015
Another Garcia Marquez excellent collections of stories.
January 29, 2023
This sucks, okay? I don't like giving one of my favorite authors of all time a two-star rating. I also don't like having to explain why I'm doing it, but this is what I do for the books I read, so here we go.
I've been a fan of García Márquez's novels for years, ever since I read One Hundred Years of Solitude and it literally changed my life (it's why I became a translator). However, this is the first time I've embarked on a journey with his short stories. Most of these, notably "Leaf Storm" itself, are early works of his. Given that I DNFed his first book, The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, a couple years ago, I think his pre-One Hundred Years work isn't quite my speed.
García Márquez's work can be opaque, but it's also rich: rich in character, rich in language, rich in atmosphere. I find that this richness is difficult to appreciate if you have so few pages to really get the hang of what he's doing in a story. It also strips the narratives of their memorable characters, since there are so few pages in which to get to know them.
The title story is a good example: it's really a novella at 100 pages, but its storytelling is so abstract that it was difficult to take an interest in the characters. There’s also some POV switching that’s not well coded, leaving the reader struggling to figure out who’s talking and why they should care. This was García Márquez's first foray into the world of Macondo, but without the later, brilliant descriptions of One Hundred Years, I’d have struggled to picture the town at all.
Most of the other, shorter stories followed this lead. I enjoyed “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” and who wouldn’t with that title anyway, but couldn’t get into anything else. It’s sad to do this to my friend Gabo, but even the best-made clocks are wrong sometimes. People say that, right?
Note on the translation: these stories were translated by Gregory Rabassa, who did a stunning job as usual. I do not hold him responsible for any of my issues with this collection!
I've been a fan of García Márquez's novels for years, ever since I read One Hundred Years of Solitude and it literally changed my life (it's why I became a translator). However, this is the first time I've embarked on a journey with his short stories. Most of these, notably "Leaf Storm" itself, are early works of his. Given that I DNFed his first book, The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor, a couple years ago, I think his pre-One Hundred Years work isn't quite my speed.
García Márquez's work can be opaque, but it's also rich: rich in character, rich in language, rich in atmosphere. I find that this richness is difficult to appreciate if you have so few pages to really get the hang of what he's doing in a story. It also strips the narratives of their memorable characters, since there are so few pages in which to get to know them.
The title story is a good example: it's really a novella at 100 pages, but its storytelling is so abstract that it was difficult to take an interest in the characters. There’s also some POV switching that’s not well coded, leaving the reader struggling to figure out who’s talking and why they should care. This was García Márquez's first foray into the world of Macondo, but without the later, brilliant descriptions of One Hundred Years, I’d have struggled to picture the town at all.
Most of the other, shorter stories followed this lead. I enjoyed “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” and who wouldn’t with that title anyway, but couldn’t get into anything else. It’s sad to do this to my friend Gabo, but even the best-made clocks are wrong sometimes. People say that, right?
Note on the translation: these stories were translated by Gregory Rabassa, who did a stunning job as usual. I do not hold him responsible for any of my issues with this collection!
March 29, 2024
look, miss, just start boiling a little grass and bring that to me as if it were soup
November 14, 2024
This book renewed my interest in the author’s books. I had read “Love in the Time of Cholera” as a teenager, but I think I was too young to truly appreciate it. Looking forward to read more!
November 17, 2015
(Crossposted from my blog: https://daariga.wordpress.com/2011/12...)
A copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude sits on my shelf mocking me everytime I look at it. I have tried to read this book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez quite a few times and have given up in the middle. In an effort to break that jinx I read Leaf Storm, a shorter work by the same author. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a writer from Colombia and is the winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. The Picador edition of Leaf Storm I read is translated from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa.
The book takes its name from the novella that appears first in the book, followed by six other short stories. The Leaf Storm walks through the thoughts of three people: an old man, his middle-aged daughter and her small son on a hot noon in the fictional town of Macondo in 1909. (Incidentally, Macondo takes center-stage in One Hundred Years of Solitude too.) The occasion is the demise of the old man’s friend, a doctor, who the whole town despises. As these three people sit in the doctor’s dusty old house preparing his body for burial, they take a long walk through the years of their lives. The works that I was strong reminded of while reading Leaf Storm were those of RK Narayan. While lacking the myriad colorful characters and landmarks of Malgudi, the principal characters, their home, lives and thoughts are similar in flavour to those in RKN’s creations.
In The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, the body of an adonis washes up at a fishing village. Though very much dead, the charms of his body sets the hearts and minds of the womenfolk aflutter and gives them new dreams while they prepare to bury him. A man with wings lands in the chicken coop of a farmer in A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. The poor couple use him as an attraction to get rich, but after his sheen fades he is discarded amongst their poultry. Just when they think he is almost dead, he recovers and flies off into the clouds. Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles is a story where a mistreated assistant of a fair trickster gains actual miracle powers and watches his former master kill himself. The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship is something unique: an entire short story told as one, yes o-n-e long sentence! In Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo returns the reader to the life of Isabel (the daughter from the Leaf Storm novella) to revisit a few days of her pregnancy when it rained non-stop for a week in Macondo. The last story Nabo is about a stablehand who enters into a coma.
Leaf Storm is a comfortable introduction to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Leaf Storm novella and Isabel’s Monologue are my favorite picks from this book. These really portray the signature style of Garcia, which I have seen in One Hundred Years. The drowned man and the man with wings are children’s fables, beautifully told. The rest of the stories are just oddities, especially Nabo, which I could not even understand properly. I liked both the story telling style and the settings of Colombia of the early 20th century in Garcia’s stories. Much like RKN and Graham Greene, he does not need grand settings or premises, but revels in the strength of his realistic characters and their small-life travails. It is yet to be seen how I will fare with his serious works like One Hundred Years of Solitude and Autumn of the Patriarch.
A copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude sits on my shelf mocking me everytime I look at it. I have tried to read this book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez quite a few times and have given up in the middle. In an effort to break that jinx I read Leaf Storm, a shorter work by the same author. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a writer from Colombia and is the winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. The Picador edition of Leaf Storm I read is translated from Spanish by Gregory Rabassa.
The book takes its name from the novella that appears first in the book, followed by six other short stories. The Leaf Storm walks through the thoughts of three people: an old man, his middle-aged daughter and her small son on a hot noon in the fictional town of Macondo in 1909. (Incidentally, Macondo takes center-stage in One Hundred Years of Solitude too.) The occasion is the demise of the old man’s friend, a doctor, who the whole town despises. As these three people sit in the doctor’s dusty old house preparing his body for burial, they take a long walk through the years of their lives. The works that I was strong reminded of while reading Leaf Storm were those of RK Narayan. While lacking the myriad colorful characters and landmarks of Malgudi, the principal characters, their home, lives and thoughts are similar in flavour to those in RKN’s creations.
In The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, the body of an adonis washes up at a fishing village. Though very much dead, the charms of his body sets the hearts and minds of the womenfolk aflutter and gives them new dreams while they prepare to bury him. A man with wings lands in the chicken coop of a farmer in A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. The poor couple use him as an attraction to get rich, but after his sheen fades he is discarded amongst their poultry. Just when they think he is almost dead, he recovers and flies off into the clouds. Blacaman the Good, Vendor of Miracles is a story where a mistreated assistant of a fair trickster gains actual miracle powers and watches his former master kill himself. The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship is something unique: an entire short story told as one, yes o-n-e long sentence! In Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo returns the reader to the life of Isabel (the daughter from the Leaf Storm novella) to revisit a few days of her pregnancy when it rained non-stop for a week in Macondo. The last story Nabo is about a stablehand who enters into a coma.
Leaf Storm is a comfortable introduction to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Leaf Storm novella and Isabel’s Monologue are my favorite picks from this book. These really portray the signature style of Garcia, which I have seen in One Hundred Years. The drowned man and the man with wings are children’s fables, beautifully told. The rest of the stories are just oddities, especially Nabo, which I could not even understand properly. I liked both the story telling style and the settings of Colombia of the early 20th century in Garcia’s stories. Much like RKN and Graham Greene, he does not need grand settings or premises, but revels in the strength of his realistic characters and their small-life travails. It is yet to be seen how I will fare with his serious works like One Hundred Years of Solitude and Autumn of the Patriarch.
June 6, 2014
I can't believe it's taken me this long to read a book by the incomparable Gabriel Garcia Marques. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, and has written One Hundred Years of Solitude (which I'll be reading with my book club this year), and Love in the Time of Cholera. I am now on a mission to read everything he's written as I fell in love with his imagery, his characters, his stories. But I need to set time aside to focus on his work. It would be a mistake to rush through his words, for you'd miss the beauty of his prose. Here's just one of many examples:
"The whirlwind was implacable. It contaminated everything with its swirling crowd smell, the smell of skin secretion and hidden death. In less than a year it sowed over the town the rubble of many catastrophes that had come before it, scattering its mixed cargo of of rubbish in the streets."
Leaf Storm is a novella about the death and funeral of an unpopular man in a small Columbia village. Told from three points of view, we see how this man developed his bad reputation and how he's affected certain people. And it's the prose that brings the characters and setting to life. The young boy is the first narrator, and from the first sentence we know it's the first time he's seen a corpse. "The heat won't let you breathe in the closed room. You can hear the sun buzzing in the streets, but that's all. The air is stagnant, like concrete; you get the feeling that it could get all twisted like a sheet of steel. In the room where they've laid out the corpse there's a smell of trunks, but I can't see any anywhere. There's a hammock in the corner hanging by one end from a ring. There's a smell of trash. And I think that the things around us, broken down and almost falling apart, have the look of things that ought to smell like trash even though they smell like something else."
The boy's mother regrets making him attend the funeral. She wishes she wasn't there either as she detested the man. Only her father seems to have feelings for the dead man; her father insisted she attend the funeral and she, in turn, insisted her son go as well. "I couldn't calculate how much shame and ridicule there would be in burying this man whom everyone had hoped to see turn to dust inside his lair...with the anticipated satisfaction of someday smelling the pleasant odor of his decomposition floating through the town without anyone's feeling moved, alarmed, or scandalized, satisfied rather at seeing the longed-for hour come, wanting the situation to go on and on until the twirling smell of the dead man would satisfy even the most hidden resentments."
The death of this man pushes resentments and bad feelings to the surface, forces the boy, his mother and her father to look back and try to figure out who they are and what they mean to one another.
"The whirlwind was implacable. It contaminated everything with its swirling crowd smell, the smell of skin secretion and hidden death. In less than a year it sowed over the town the rubble of many catastrophes that had come before it, scattering its mixed cargo of of rubbish in the streets."
Leaf Storm is a novella about the death and funeral of an unpopular man in a small Columbia village. Told from three points of view, we see how this man developed his bad reputation and how he's affected certain people. And it's the prose that brings the characters and setting to life. The young boy is the first narrator, and from the first sentence we know it's the first time he's seen a corpse. "The heat won't let you breathe in the closed room. You can hear the sun buzzing in the streets, but that's all. The air is stagnant, like concrete; you get the feeling that it could get all twisted like a sheet of steel. In the room where they've laid out the corpse there's a smell of trunks, but I can't see any anywhere. There's a hammock in the corner hanging by one end from a ring. There's a smell of trash. And I think that the things around us, broken down and almost falling apart, have the look of things that ought to smell like trash even though they smell like something else."
The boy's mother regrets making him attend the funeral. She wishes she wasn't there either as she detested the man. Only her father seems to have feelings for the dead man; her father insisted she attend the funeral and she, in turn, insisted her son go as well. "I couldn't calculate how much shame and ridicule there would be in burying this man whom everyone had hoped to see turn to dust inside his lair...with the anticipated satisfaction of someday smelling the pleasant odor of his decomposition floating through the town without anyone's feeling moved, alarmed, or scandalized, satisfied rather at seeing the longed-for hour come, wanting the situation to go on and on until the twirling smell of the dead man would satisfy even the most hidden resentments."
The death of this man pushes resentments and bad feelings to the surface, forces the boy, his mother and her father to look back and try to figure out who they are and what they mean to one another.
June 22, 2020
It's rather odd that I give a novella by my favourite author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, any rating other than 5/5, but although very, very good, it does not reach the heights of his other books and stories.
From what I understand this was his first publication, written at the age of 21, which might explain how it didn't quite tie together as a story. Nevertheless, GGM's brilliance and unmistakable style, are still there in full force. The writing is on the borderline of magical realism, but not quite. GGM uses time, which is quite essential to the story, in an interesting way. The whole story, takes place within only 20 minutes or so, but it is told, as a stream of consciousness manner, through 3 narrators. There's frequent back and forth in time and sometimes, it's challenging to determine which of the 3 narrators is talking.
Altogether, perhaps not GGM's finest work, but it introduces our beloved Macondo, which features in 100 years of solitude, for the first time, so a definite must read for his fans!
From what I understand this was his first publication, written at the age of 21, which might explain how it didn't quite tie together as a story. Nevertheless, GGM's brilliance and unmistakable style, are still there in full force. The writing is on the borderline of magical realism, but not quite. GGM uses time, which is quite essential to the story, in an interesting way. The whole story, takes place within only 20 minutes or so, but it is told, as a stream of consciousness manner, through 3 narrators. There's frequent back and forth in time and sometimes, it's challenging to determine which of the 3 narrators is talking.
Altogether, perhaps not GGM's finest work, but it introduces our beloved Macondo, which features in 100 years of solitude, for the first time, so a definite must read for his fans!
November 20, 2024
Re-read again in late 2024. More Macondo.More multiple narratives, with voices shifting abruptly. More stylistic extremes - one story is a single sentence. The senses, all of them, play key roles throughout, often taking precedence ove plot development and even while inner thoughts are also revealed. Again per usual, issues of mortality, faith, consciousness and perception constantly percolate within and beneath the texts.
Want to read
June 27, 2011dapet edisi indonesia nya *baru ngeh ada terjemahannya*
inilah hasil usaha dan kerja keras "ngintil" si aldo. cukup ngintil aja gak usah ikut ngaduk2 rak bukunya di palasari :))
Dari hasil "adukan" dan "acakan" dia munculah buku ini terselip diantara tumpukan buku2 yang dah dekil dan buluk
*melrik durjana ke yang nyimpen buku ini di wishlist nya*
inilah hasil usaha dan kerja keras "ngintil" si aldo. cukup ngintil aja gak usah ikut ngaduk2 rak bukunya di palasari :))
Dari hasil "adukan" dan "acakan" dia munculah buku ini terselip diantara tumpukan buku2 yang dah dekil dan buluk
*melrik durjana ke yang nyimpen buku ini di wishlist nya*
December 27, 2007
Marquez has a very particular way that carries you further into his world of fantasy and solitude, which in turn, takes me further into my own world. Some of his best short stories are in this collection.
April 1, 2020
Hard for me to get into, but worth it. Such intricate, skilled writing.
June 8, 2021
His writing is incredibly poetic and vivid. I feel as though it is very easy to fall into the worlds he creates. It's so beautiful and such a blessing to read.
January 17, 2023
“Believe me, colonel, I'm not an atheist. I get just as upset thinking that God exists as thinking that he doesn't. That's why I'd rather not think about it.”
September 3, 2025
I Sell Dreams by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
It is intriguing to find in a story by the master of Magical Realism real people. Pablo Neruda makes an appearance in this short story, and only that by he dreams something interesting.
He dreams about this outlandish woman who…dreams about his future.
And to return in full Magical Realism, the woman herself dreams about Neruda and his dream.
The irony of this very good story is that the woman who presumably can tell the future dies in the first lines of the story, swept away by a huge wave.
Again, I am reminded by a line in Prizzi’s Honour, where Charlie Partana played by an outstanding Jack Nicholson says:
- If Marxie Heller's so fucking smart, how come he's so fucking dead”...
It is an oxymoron to be a fortune teller and then be killed by a wave, on the shore.
On the other hand, Freda, the heroine was Selling Dreams.
She stayed in Vienna, where she was dreaming and telling her dreams to a family that paid for her lodgings, meals and this job of telling them what to avoid and when to go out.
Freda was in control of that family.
Then Pablo Neruda makes an unexpected appearance, as a gluttonous man, presiding over tables and eating lobsters with gusto.
This probably goes to prove that the Realism in Magical Realism is alive and kicking. It is actually part of the attraction, at least for this reader.
I am not keen on magic which is just plain absurd, that’s probably why I do not fall for the Eugene Ionesco plays.
In what concerns Freda’s dreams and her ability, or is it her subconscious’ capacity to tell the future from her dreams and not only that, but insert herself somehow into Neruda’s dream, I believe anything is possible.
After reading psychology and research that shows how Magical human capacities are, I am open to find any outlandish story to be true.
We are taken in a very short story to Columbia, Havana, and Vienna and then sent to Japan through a tea ceremony metaphor. After Neruda makes his Special Guest Star performance, Borges is mentioned and the passage of the dream of the poet which interacts with Freda’s dream:
- This right out of Borges
- If he did not write that…
- It will be in one of his Labyrinths”
It is marvelous how a fabulous writer can include so much in a few pages and reveal his talent in such small pieces. Small, but gems anyhow.
I must express my admiration and gratitude to the giant writer for such moments of bliss, but I must confess that it puzzles me to find the other work I read now a bit too linear, I would not dare and say boring in its description of cows defecating in balconies, hens running amok in presidential palace saloons.
It may be strange phenomena, all my fault – to become disinterested in the most outrageous happenings and situations. It is a proof though that when one starts reading a book in a style which is shocking, one feels the adrenaline rushing and eyes pop out of sockets.
But with time, reading about testicles carried in wheel barrows and scandalous sex does not produce the same chemical reactions in the brain.
Not in mine, alas.
But it will happen again…Insh’Allah.
November 6, 2024
Not terrible but not for me. Would recommend to people who really loved one hundred years of solitude because this is more of the same !! Unfortunately, to me these stories felt like chapters that didn’t make the cut to the main book :/ the leaf storm as the general background to a few of the stories was a cool concept, but the regular perspective switch and time jumping without warning was hard to keep up with
Read
November 19, 2023Only read two stories in this collection (ironically not "Leaf Storm"), but I might revisit the others because Márquez is a fascinating writer.
October 6, 2024
life, death, and all of the liminal space in between
June 16, 2025
this ranking is not including the short stories
was rather interesting the short stories not so much
was rather interesting the short stories not so much
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