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Harshita Diddee

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Harshita Diddee is currently reading

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Gabriel García Márquez

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Harshita Diddee said: " WIP:

If the reading world had Hyrox: This masterpiece would be the singular routine on it.

Enumerating all the unique things about this book would be as hard as keeping a count of all the variants of 'And they decided to name him José Arcadio' but th WIP:

If the reading world had Hyrox: This masterpiece would be the singular routine on it.

Enumerating all the unique things about this book would be as hard as keeping a count of all the variants of 'And they decided to name him José Arcadio' but the book has a few distinctive features which almost make this like one of those rare forms of media whose consumption seems impossible to limit to paper; This book was a gypsy's song just as much as it was a kaleidoscopic (truly, symmetric in the way these names were re-used :) presentation just as is much as it was a wift of whatever lavender aftershave the folks at Macondo used. The entire story was actually like some kind of river - I was on the riverbank just looking into the lives of these fascinating creatures going by.

To substantiate the fascination of the said characters: the female characters in this book exercise agency unlike any book I've read. They are bitter, stubborn, jealous, petty, nurturing, lustful and basically every flavor of womanhood that I've encountered but their actions transition through these with such benign narratives that one really can't place their true nature. So many of them experience internal conflicts that further testify how rich these characters are: And frankly, how could they not be ? With such rich fodder around them, they behaved, adapted even, to the tides of change in Macondo but never really buckled. If I were in Amaranta's shoe's, for example, I wouldn't consider turning down the suitor who spurned me and the suitor who worshipped me and the suitor who was willing to defy social norms for me, etc. The consistency was so refreshing (and inspiring).

In fact, if I wasn't at least anecdotally aware of the dominance of the nature of duplicate nomenclature amongst kin - I would almost argue that the author was trying to represent all shades of manhood through the many Jose' and Arcadio's we encountered: The courageous phases of manhood where one saves their kin (Jose Arcadio) from execution fused with a simultaneous susceptibility to cruelty endowed to those who come to power (Arcadio) - the book really endowed each character with storylines that highlighted a sheer volume of emotions that I have yet to encounter in one single specimen of media. ...more "

Jan 07, 2026 09:03PM · see review