One hundred years of Solitude

"My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separates what seems real from what seems fantastic." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Hesitantly, I picked up and bought Marquez’s “One hundred years of Solitude”. Magical realism was a genre new to me. But once I’d begun reading, I was, to use a terrible cliché, hooked…
It is a book where the real and the surreal crisscross paths, where daguerreotypes and flying carpets co-exist, where a young girl rises into the heavens never to return and the steam-engine is brought into a village amidst jubilance. A village falls victim to an epidemic of insomnia but, like every other village has its share of jealousies, enmities and love-stories.
Marquez intertwines magic and realism effortlessly, and at a certain point, the reader can no longer differentiate between the two. He narrates the story of the village of Macondo, of the Buendia family whose fortunes rise and fall with that of the village. There is a story within the story, several sub-plots and a narrative that moves backwards and forwards. It is can become difficult to follow sometimes, with confusing relations between the Buendia family members and the recurring names. The family tree at the beginning of the book sure does help.
I absolutely loved this book for two reasons – its capacity to transport you into another world and of course, the delightful blend of fantasy and realism.
Another book that succeeds in doing this is Salman Rushdie’s “Shalimar, the Clown”, and I’ll review it later. For now, if you haven’t read “One hundred years of solitude”, get down to it ASAP…