Now I really know what is meant with magical realism when talking about Latin American books. One Hundred Years of Solitude probably is the book that defined this genre. I read other books of this type before and really liked them. I also read Garcia Marquez‘ Love in the Time of Cholera twice and it was the reason why I sought out Hundred Years of Solitude. I thought that Love in the Time of Cholera also belongs to the school of magical realism. But Solitude is a whole other league of magic. In fact, I don’t think anymore that Cholera is in this genre.
Magical realism creates opportunities for fascinating artistic feats. A solution is promised once it stops raining. The next chapter announces that it rained for 4 years, 11 months and 2 days. The tribe mother already lives for 145 years when she starts to lose her grip on reality. A minor detached character literally ascends to heaven. Seventeen bastard descendants all carry the same sign on their forehead and die on the same day. I love this mean in the hand of a master who knows how to integrate them into a coherent plot and avoids the trap of becoming an absurd comedy. Garcia Marquez does this perfectly.
While I really liked this book, I enjoyed his later work about love in times of cholera even more. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a confusing and sprawling book by intention. The tale spans four or five generations, dozens of characters and most of them share the same few names. Arcadio, Aureliano, José, Remedios in various combinations. They are less individuals than representations of character types. While I see why the author did this, at times it gave me a hard time putting into context what I just read and I occasionally got detached from the figures and their actions. In the end, it was worth the effort. I won’t spoil the end but I found it to be a fantastic and logical resolution tying up the loose ends.