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Apr 09, 2018luketenhage rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
This book forced me to question my rating philosophy. Do I award stars based off enjoyment, the overall quality of the book, or a mixture of both? I'm forced to go with the second of these three choices. Thus, One Hundred Years of Solitude gets five stars despite the fact that certain elements felt gimmicky and lazy on Marquez' part. The novel is a rich aesthetic experience without a doubt. My main issue with the novel is the elements which one would classify as "magical realism". Girls ascending to heaven, ghosts conversing with the dead, alchemy, human beings with tails, etc. I acknowledge that it's these parts which make the novel remarkable. At the same time though, its these elements which instigate the novel's turning points rather than say, characters undergoing change. This is understandable though since Marquez covers a great expanse of time which features a batshit crazy number of charactters in little over four hundred pages. If it weren't for the novel's beauty, it would suffer from an excess of ambition. What's good about the novel is its meditations on the fluidity of time. I am quite the sucker for modernism. Overall, the book is breathtaking although I have certain reservations about it.