If you're into incest, pedophilia, rape, incestuous rape and/or bestiality you'll love this book.
One Hundred Years of Solitude spans, not shockingly, 100 years in the lives of a family in Maconda, a country in the Caribbean. Initially, the story was quite intriguing, despite the fact that it had several elements that typically turn me off, such as magic and paranormal activities. The first few stories of the family that initially settled the city and the stories about things like the 2 year insomnia spell that prevented anyone from sleeping, or the lengths the family went to to keep death from finding where they were, and thus insuring their immortality were engaging, dramatic and certainly enjoyable to read.
Once the 2nd generation began to be introduced, however, I became a bit...uncomfortable.
First of all, there is a shit ton of incest in this book. With every generation (there are about 5 generations depicted in this book) the parents are some combination of brother/sister/aunt/cousin and always take great pains to make sure that their children don't know that they're the result of incest. They go to such great pains, in fact, that the children end up not realizing that they're related and inevitably procreate with one another.
Over and over and over again.
Also, the incestuous sex is graphic and bizarre. For example :
"While he would rub Aureliano Ursula's [his aunt] erect breasts with egg whites or smooth her elastic thighs and peach like stomach with cocoa butter, she would play with Aureliano's portentous creature [that's his penis], as if it were a doll and would paint clown's eyes on it with her lipstick and give it a Turk's organza bow ties and little tinfoil hats."
There's also all kinds of bestiality and children having sex with each other and with adults.
Beyond the sex business, which was no small problem for me, the other problem I had was with the names. The main characters are named as follows :
Jose Arcadio Buendia
Jose Arcadia
Arcadia
Jose Arcadio
Jose Arcadio Segundo
Colonel Aureliano Buendia
Aureliano Jose
Aureliano Segundo
Aurelianos
2 men named Aureliano
Amaranta
Ursula Iguaran
Amaranta Ursula
Remiedos
Remidos the Beauty
Renata Remidos
You can see how this would pose a problem. After about 100 pages or so, I completely gave up on trying to tell them all apart and just went with the flow. It would definitely take a few readings of this to properly grasp it. I don't see that happening.
4/10
YTD:
Books read : 17
Pages read : 5,142
Currently reading : The Mercy Seat by Rilla Askew & Eastern Europe and Communist Rule by J.F. Brown
1 comment:
I found myself turning page after page because of the imagery the book has provided. It had its funny moments, like how Amaranta Ursula and Aureliano Babilonia would dress old Ursula up as if she was a doll. Of course, there were hilarious euphemisms to penises and donkey-shagging.
Overall, it's a very tragic and depressing read, a book you should avoid when you're in a bad mood already haha. I feel really sorry for the Buendia famliy because it was as if they were cursed right from the very start.
I enjoyed this book a lot, and if my time allows me to, I'll reread it again. This is my first time reading a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book, and I'll be looking forward to reading his other works as well.
Post a Comment