Brooke Everett

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Brooke is Currently Reading

Brooke Everett is currently reading

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel García Márquez

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 3rd time

read in November 2015

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Brooke Everett said: " Updated review from 11/14/15:

Colombia: where crazy shit happens in a magically beautiful place. That's my interpretation of magical realism, at least. This story is like a whisper of a tale you've heard a million times, something almost imprinted on Updated review from 11/14/15:

Colombia: where crazy shit happens in a magically beautiful place. That's my interpretation of magical realism, at least. This story is like a whisper of a tale you've heard a million times, something almost imprinted on collective consciousness. The language and imagery is insane - Rabassa's translation is a masterpiece in and of itself.

From the first time I read this book I do remember the first part about the wars of Colonel Aureliano Buendía being a bit onerous and something to slog through, but oh, is it worth it for the end. Even though I knew what would happen, I was still racing through the final pages to soak it all in as quickly as possible.

Arcadio's thoughts before death: "He thought about his people without sentimentality, with a strict closing of his accounts with life, beginning to understand how much he really loved the people he hated the most." p. 129

Amaranta's thoughts on Rebeca: "Always, at every moment, asleep and awake, during the most sublime and most abject moments, Amaranta thought about Rebeca, because solitude had made a selection in her memory and had burned the dimming piles of nostalgic waste that life had accumulated in her heart, and had purified, magnified, and eternalized the others, the most bitter ones." p. 236

Meme being sent to the convent on the train: "She did not look out the window, not even when the burning dampness of the groves ended and the train went through a poppy-laden plain where the carbonized skeleton of the Spanish galleon still sat and then came out into the clear air alongside the frothy, dirty sea where almost a century before José Arcadio Buendía's illusions had met defeat." p. 317

"If it had not been for that suffering, which would have had nothing shameful about it for someone who did not suffer as well from shamefulness, and if it had not been for the loss of the letters, the rain would not have bothered Fernanda, because, after all, her whole life had been spent as if it had been raining." p. 343

Fernanda: "The woman of every day, the one with her head held high and a stony gait, did not arrive, but an old woman of supernatural beauty with a yellowed ermine cape, a crown of gilded cardboard, and the languid look of a person who wept in secret." p. 391

From the wise Catalonian who owned the bookstore: "Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that whatever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end." p. 433 DUDE. WHOAH.

Original review: Best. Book. Ever. I think I'm actually going to re-read this soon. ...more "

Nov 14, 2015 05:28PM · see review