One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez (pub. 1967, Argentina; 1970, Gregory Rabassa translation)
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So... the English translation of this came out five years before I was born. Um, I guess it's something I've been sort of wanting to read for quite awhile, now, and I finally did so in 2019. And... I liked it. I just couldn't manage to like it nearly as much as I wanted to. It's considered a very important novel, one of the greatest ever written, and in particular it's considered one of the greatest works of Latin American literature. It's also one of the most iconic works in the magical realism genre. I don't doubt that it fully deserves all the acclaim it has received over the years, but there are several things about the book that prevent it from being my cup of tea. One is symbolism; I've just never been a big fan of symbolism. To give you an idea of how much of it there is in this book, you should totally read an article, On the Iconic First Line of One Hundred Years of Solitude. It's a very good article, which deals with the passage of time, and how that can be perceived differently in tropical regions than in more temperate climates, and how that difference affects García Márquez's writing style. The idea is explored, as the article's title suggests, primarily based on the very first sentence of the novel. I find it fascinating, but it's far more than I could have ever hoped to glean from a single sentence. So my mind boggles at the thought of trying to interpret an entire book with that much depth. No, mostly I prefer to read a story for what's on the surface. And I do think the book is interesting enough on that level, but I'm sure it's much more meaningful for people who actually enjoy pondering deeper themes and symbols. Another problem I had with the book was how hard it was for me to follow exactly when things were happening, and to whom. The narrative jumps back and forth in time... mostly relatively small leaps, but often with little or no segue to help the reader necessarily realize the leaps are even happening, at least not until the narrative has returned to the present. Adding to the confusion is the tendency of the central family of the story often giving children the same names as their forebears. There are just so many characters with virtually the same names. Even with a family tree in the front of the book, I couldn't keep track of how everyone was related to each other, how old anyone was at any given time, etc. So that made it hard for me to care too much about any of the characters as individuals. Yet another problem I had with the story was that there are several incestuous relationships, throughout the family's history. And sometimes... well, at least in one instance... there was some rather disturbing pedophilia.

But sadly, I think perhaps the thing that makes it hardest for me to fully enjoy the book is my tendency toward disinterest in the lives of my own relatives. Not to say I don't care about them, I just don't really have much interest in knowing the everyday details of their lives. And that's pretty much all this book is, from my perspective: the details of the lives of a whole bunch of people in a single family, over several generations. Of course, a lot of those details are more interesting than the details of most people's lives, in reality, but even when I do manage to find them interesting, I don't necessarily like them. The details, I mean. Especially, as I said, when I can barely remember who anyone is or how they're related. So, I soon resigned myself to being aware of what was going on at any given point in the narrative, but not being able to connect it to anything that may have happened to the same characters at other points in the narrative, or anything the characters may have done, or thought, or felt.

Still, I do like the concept of time being cyclical, in a way. And I enjoyed all the things that happen in the story that lean more toward the magical side of the genre (that is, supernatural or otherwise unrealistic or even impossible). I think most of the story leans more toward the realism side, and I suppose in some ways that could be more interesting, for some people, even than the surreal bits. Especially for readers who are more fond of following the lives of relatives than I am, and in particular seeing just how a family evolves over a century. Especially especially in a fictional place like Macondo. Even I managed to enjoy some of the connections between things that happened near the beginning of the book and things near the end. Oh, and the end itself... I definitely thought it was cool. I mean, I spent most of my time reading the book thinking that there wasn't really an actual plot, per se, so I found it hard to imagine how the end could possibly be satisfying. But it definitely was.

Anyway, I guess I haven't actually described anything about what passes for a plot. And there's not much I can say, specifically. But... José Arcadio Buendía and his wife, Úrsula Iguarán, are among the founders of a village called Macondo, somewhere in Colombia, I guess. They have a few kids, the most memorable of whom, I would say, is Aureliano (the one from the book's first sentence, who eventually becomes a colonel). He fights in lots of wars throughout his life, as a revered rebel leader. Also I feel I should mention a gypsy named Melquíades, whom José Arcadio befriended over the course of the gypsies' frequent visits to Macondo. When he retires, he comes to live with the Buendía family, and writes some mysterious parchments, which I guess several members of different generations of the family tried to decipher. But no one does until the last generation. (And that's where the fascinating conclusion of the story comes from.) In between the first generation and the last, a great deal happens, most of which just seemed rather disjointed, to me. I suppose it's all rather interesting, each bit of plot in its own way. But I wouldn't want to spoil any of it even if I had any idea what to say about it. It's just, you know... one hundred years worth of things happening, and a lot of it seems pretty random, even if it is all sort of connected in some way. (Which I'm not convinced that it is.)

And now I don't know what else to tell you. But I'm very glad to have finally read the book, and I expect I'd like to read more of Gabriel García Márquez's work. It might have been nearly impossible to follow, but I couldn't possibly say that it was ever boring.