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ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE
by Gabriel García Márquez & illustrated by Gregory Rabassa by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 25, 1969
Those who pass time with the Señor will find this a luxuriant, splendid and spirited conception.
Those (guessably not the general reader) who do not find the labyrinthine configurations of Señor Garcia-Marquez's mighty myth impregnable, and at times interminable, will be rewarded by this story of one hundred years and six generations in the peaceful, primal and ageless world of Macondo.
This is where his earlier No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories (1968) took place and it also features the same Buendia clan and its Colonel, a figure of dauntless energy and pride and stamina who carries on 32 small wars and fathers 17 sons by 17 wives. The Buendias are, for more direct purposes of identification, deliberately inseparable by name (and impulse—incest abounds) in spite of the helpful family tree frontispiece. At a rough count there are four Arcadios from the sire Jose Arcadio and six Aurelianos, including a pair of twins. Perhaps it does not matter since they all share to a degree the stubborn simplicity and outsized contours of comic folk characters. But if Senor Garcia-Marquez' book is fable, it is also satire with some of the fanciful giantism of earlier proponents (cf. the sections on war or government and the finally perceived "emptiness' of the former). For a time the Buendias remain untouched in their innocent world and are stunningly surprised by the artifacts of civilization which reach them—ice or false teeth. And even though they are afraid of a horrible precedent (a child born with a pig's tail) they pursue their closely inbred ways. But the incursions from elsewhere and above persist: there's the early plague of insomnia to the later four year, eleven month, two day rain. In the beginning so full of life, the Buendias give way to death and dispersion, and the last scenes of great-great-great-grandmother Ursula, living in the somnolent margins of memory, have great pathos. "Time passes. That's how it goes, but not so much" is a byword of the Buendias.
Pub Date: Feb. 25, 1969
ISBN: 006112009X
Page Count: 417
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1969
FANTASY | EPIC FANTASY | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
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BOOK REVIEW
by Gabriel García Márquez ; translated by Anne McLean
by Gabriel García Márquez edited by Cristóbal Pera translated by Anne McLean
by Gabriel García Márquez translated by Edith Grossman
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New York Times Bestseller
by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION
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by Max Brooks
BOOK TO SCREEN
THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA
by TJ Klune ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
A breezy and fun contemporary fantasy.
A tightly wound caseworker is pushed out of his comfort zone when he’s sent to observe a remote orphanage for magical children.
Linus Baker loves rules, which makes him perfectly suited for his job as a midlevel bureaucrat working for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, where he investigates orphanages for children who can do things like make objects float, who have tails or feathers, and even those who are young witches. Linus clings to the notion that his job is about saving children from cruel or dangerous homes, but really he’s a cog in a government machine that treats magical children as second-class citizens. When Extremely Upper Management sends for Linus, he learns that his next assignment is a mission to an island orphanage for especially dangerous kids. He is to stay on the island for a month and write reports for Extremely Upper Management, which warns him to be especially meticulous in his observations. When he reaches the island, he meets extraordinary kids like Talia the gnome, Theodore the wyvern, and Chauncey, an amorphous blob whose parentage is unknown. The proprietor of the orphanage is a strange but charming man named Arthur, who makes it clear to Linus that he will do anything in his power to give his charges a loving home on the island. As Linus spends more time with Arthur and the kids, he starts to question a world that would shun them for being different, and he even develops romantic feelings for Arthur. Lambda Literary Award–winning author Klune ( The Art of Breathing , 2019, etc.) has a knack for creating endearing characters, and readers will grow to love Arthur and the orphans alongside Linus. Linus himself is a lovable protagonist despite his prickliness, and Klune aptly handles his evolving feelings and morals. The prose is a touch wooden in places, but fans of quirky fantasy will eat it up.
Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21728-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2019
GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | FANTASY
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by TJ Klune
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Blue Marble Review
Literary Journal for Young Writers
Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude
By Christine Baek
Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien Años de Soledad, or One Hundred Years of Solitude , reads more like a history than a novel. Chronicling seven generations of the Buendía family, the narrative acts as a wandering guide, often retracing its steps to breathe new life into past memories before moving forward. This writing style could almost be mistaken as discursive if not for the vibrant cast of characters– explorers, scientists, soldiers, artists– whose variegated trials and errors, loves and losses distract us from the rapid shifts through time, and revitalize the glories and pains of humanity.
In the very first chapter, we are carried from the present as Colonel Aureliano Buendía faces the firing squad, to the past where the colonel and his father José Arcadio first touch ice, and then even further back to the founding of Macondo, the Colombian village-home of the Buendías. These bursts of “time-travel” permeate nearly every page and can be as confusing as the repetitious Buendía family names: two Amarantas, four José Arcadios, and over twenty Aurelianos. But the mind-bending effects of these elements are purposeful, forwarding the themes of cyclical fate and the inseparability of past, present, and future. Whether by divine will or by virtue of human nature, each and every generation of the Buendías suffers from Solitude. Family members bearing the same name even share identical causes, which can take the forms of spurned love, violent death, or decrepitude. And with this infallible condition of Solitude comes slow decay, as the once invincible Buendía family descends into ignominy, unable to break free from the inheritance and conditionings of its predecessors.
While One Hundred Years of Solitude can be read solely as a compelling family drama, Márquez’s 448-page book serves as a political commentary on the Latin American elite and the cycles of violence and instability plaguing the continent. Intertwining with the Buendía narrative are military campaigns, political executions, and short-lived dictatorships. In doing so, Márquez retells his own experience as a Colombian living in the crossfire of the banana republics. His unflinching narrative of destruction and decay, therefore, is less of a pessimistic criticism and more of a solemn reflection on humankind. The paradise of Macondo, removed from society and technology, cannot last, Márquez seems to say, because human nature and history deem it so.
And yet One Hundred Years of Solitude reads as uplifting, celebrating the brevity of joy and peace in the midst of war and turmoil. This strange and seemingly irreconcilable dichotomy only cements the nuance of Márquez’s voice and of his belief in our capacity for redemption. As he states in his Nobel Prize Lecture, an echo of the story’s ending:
“It is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.”
A high school student from the Atlanta suburbs, Christine Baek enjoys writing for The Muse and reading up on history, philosophy, and paleontology.
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