S is for One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Another one I DO NOT recommend. But I think it is important that people read all the reviews, some love it some hate it, I'm in the latter camp.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Penguin 06/09/07 Paperback
4/10
Gift (Penguin Intern)
This book either gets five stars or one. For those who award five, a review of incredibly critical insight is written. For those who award one they apologise for 'not getting it'. I will not apologise.
I get it. The passage of time, the reality of time, the madness of the human condition. The absurd. One critic called it Dali in words. I loved passages of the writing. Perhaps one paragraph in nine. But I could not finish it. Such importance was put upon the family, but we were raced through it. I lost interest in trying to keep up. Unlike Ulysses where the beauty of the language has to wash over you as you read it (and perhaps this is the downfall of translation) one hundred years of solitude read as a very dull timeline with extraordinary events chucked in. Other critics I read said: one hundred years of Boredom/Tedium/Torture. I am inclined to agree. I did not finish it and I would not recommend it.
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