"One Hundred Years of Solitude" Good or Bad?

Post Reply New Topic

Picked this up second-hand at the same time as the bad translation of Kafka's "The Trial", and the wonderful "Invitation to the Waltz" by Rosamond Lehmann.

Now started reading it.

Apparently it is the best ( canonical ) translation, ( by Gregory Rabassa), and I have previously successfully and happily read George Eliot, Dickens, Austen and Henry James, etc, so am not a complete stranger to long or medium-difficult books. But ...

I just spent almost an hour reading around the internet to see why people have said this is the greatest book ever written, or as important as Genesis, or a "must read", etc etc.

I have found many others who, like me at the moment, ( currently on page 40 of a 330 odd page edition ), declare it boring, total c**p, pointless, overrated, a case of the emperor's new clothes, annoying, irritating, badly written etc. Though actually my attitude is more like "Why, WHY is this book so highly regarded? Why on earth did it win the Nobel prize for literature in 1982?"

I have found others who declare it their favourite book, underrated if that is possible, unmissable, etc.

I am not throwing it out. I have been just sufficiently impressed by a couple of people's expressions of admiration for this book to decide it might possibly be worth making an effort to read despite the very bad first impression it has made on me.

So I wondered what the wrongplanet opinions about it were.

I love it. I read the book about a year ago, and it was the Rabassa translation as well. I was hooked by the end of the first page, and I plan on rereading it someday. Read at least another forty pages before quitting. I think that it has a lot of depth and awareness of human history, political struggle, passion and love, and the ways that we create meaning in our lives.

Well it's not as great as many people say it is, but I did really enjoy it. It's both very good and quite readable in my opinion. It's been a while since I read it so I might need a refresher before I can give any specific feedback, but I liked the "magical realism" of it, and enjoyed the variety of the narrative. It's a colorful book which expresses a lot about history and change on a very personal level.

I thought of it more as a 'fun' book . If you don't find it fun after 40 pages then I doubt I'm going to change your mind...

I love it, but if you don't like it, there's no point in continuing

It's very long so I had to write now names down so I wouldn't be confused of which character was who since they were named after eachother.

I liked it and I look at it in a surrealist view rather than a serious one. It's got a lot of creativity in it and changes that slowly take place which is why it's soooo long but luv it.