[ book tip by M.C. Dolcy ] Welcome to the fictional Macondo, a humble town with traditional values, founded by patriarch José Arcadio Buendia. From its birth, we will be taken on a journey through the passing of time; with a looping chronology that would take in the repetition of events, people and seven generations of the Buendia household.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is the perfect entry point in viewing Gabriel Garcia Marquez's work. Steeped in fictional ambiguity, with a large ensemble cast of inter-related characters, it achieves fluidity, humour and intelligence to create an enchanting fairytale of adult fiction.

A multitude of themes and ideas run throughout the book, including birth, death, incest, and unrequited and forbidden love as a repetitious cycle. Marquez's poetry of words, expressions of thoughts and feelings, and the embracement of magic is a triumph of modern story telling. At four-hundred plus pages long, and with limited dialogue, it manages to sustain a fast pace, reading like an accumulation of short stories interlinked as one.

Irony is an important tool used in the reconfiguration process involving each new member of the Buendia family who is almost certainly named after their ancestors (Aureliano, Arcadio, Remedios) until there becomes a lack of distinction between the past and the present.

So much happens within the book and as characters live and die, their stories are given significant time. Remedios the Beauty’s splendour is so captivating that it causes the deaths of many, Colonel Aureliano Buendia fights and loses 32 civil wars, and omens of children being born with pigtails, results in ghosts coming back to haunt their murderers.

Inspired by Marquez's grandparents' house in Aracataca where he was raised, and the fantastical stories told by his grandmother, One Hundred Years of Solitude is the beacon of Latin American fiction and the standard bearer of Magic Realism; a captivating read that will forever stand the test of time.

[ Favourite quote ] 'The first in line is tied to a tree, the last is being eaten by ants'

[ book info ] Márquez, Gabriel García: One Hundred years of Solitude. (Book language: Spanish) Penguin, Colombia, 1967 .