100 magical years of solitude, love, death and betrayal (From Swindon Advertiser)

100 magical years of solitude, love, death and betrayal

10:12am Tuesday 7th April 2009

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IF you’re going to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude, I recommend you set aside a week of solitude for the pleasure.

I only managed to settle down with it at weekends and it did become rather tricky to keep track of who is who.

This is down to almost every member of the Buendias family being named after their forebears, and so there is a confusing proliferation of Aurelianos, Arcadios and Jose Arcadios.

I put it down to Mr Marquez’ wicked sense of humour for each time a newborn appears, one character will say ’let’s call him Rodrigo’ or such-like (brilliant, I think, I’ll be able to remember this one easily), only to be over-ruled in favour of the same name as all the other characters.

Anyway. Names, aside, this is a truly magical book, set in a town called Macondo in the South American jungle. Part nightmare, part tropical paradise, the town was set up by Jose Arcadio Buendia and the book follows the trials and tribulations of flesh and mortar through 100 years.

All Marquez’ classic themes are present - love, war, sex, religion, insanity, beauty and old age. There is plenty of machismo, a lot of wars, and, of course, plenty of people dying for love.

There is something lyrical about Marquez’ writing - he may write in prose, but his work has the imagination of poetry. Men see their lost love in the diamond shapes of light in an abandoned house, one woman wears a black bandage on her hand her entire life in memory of the lover who killed himself, an old soldier spends his days making little gold fishes only to melt them down and make them again.

This is a masterpiece of magic realism, where ghosts move in and out of the narrative as easily as the living characters. An insomnia plague leaves the town in delirium, people rise to heaven, men become permanently marked with an ashen cross and people live to about 150.

It’s also hilarious, as well as being brutal, nostalgiac, romantic and, in the end, tragic.

So if you’ve got a holiday coming up, take this book with you and disappear into another, fantastical world.

(Adam Bede is still on the list of things to read... soonish).