One Hundred Years of Solitude
Finally was able to finish this masterpiece by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Phew!
Whenever you read a classic by Nobel winning author, reading scares you in a way that you always get bogged down by your own mind and keep on thinking- this is classic, once in a lifetime, kind of book. Why? You are not able to understand that. This happened to me with this book.
The book indeed is confusing because of the similar names and characteristics of different characters from different generations. There are quite a few perplexing things mentioned which are not real as well but sound simple in the storyline as if they just happened naturally.
Aureliano and Jose Arcadio are the prominent names that keep on figuring in the entire book as each offspring has either of the names which further adds to the confusion and you have to refer to the family tree given in the beginning, without which it would have been impossible to remember the lineage of the Buendia family. The story is of Buendia family and the village Macondo founded by the patriarch, Jose Arcadio Buendia, and the journey of the family for 100 years where each generation bears an uncanny resemblance both in character and nature to the previous ones and they bear the same fate of solitude in the end.
The book at times leads you nowhere but it is only in the end that all the dots get connected and the book generates the reverence for which it is famous for. The story of a lineage or clan condemned to one hundred years of solitude where uncountable characters come, play a part and go. It is really amazing how the author has woven such an intricate complex storyline.
Buy the book here: