Review of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garciz Marquez

I did not like this book in the slighteset. One Hundred Years of Solitude starts with a brilliant first sentence and never reaches that level of writing all 422 pages. GGM does not have any character development in this book, no structured plot and provides the reader no reason to care about the characters he has written about.

Magical realism can be fun but in this instance it hinders the book. Why should I care about a characters death when other characters reappear from their death years later? Why should I take a death seriously when a characeter simply floats into the sky one day and is never seen again. Sure, magical realism allows for the introduction of a flying carpeter which is just a magical to the characters as ice or magenents are (and it total fiction to the reader) and it allows for some nice metaphores to be included in the book but thats about it. Great-great-great grandmothers living to 130+ years old do not help the plot. YoU dOn'T uNdErstAnD tHe cItY oF MoCaNdO iS tHe mAin ChArAcTeR. Yeah I got that. Still doesn't make me care. 5 straight years of rain that flood the town followed by an unstoppable drought do not make me care.

I think if GGM focused on a few characters over a normal span of time instead of dozens of characters that never become developed the reader would care more. Speaking of character who in their right mind thinks its ok to name all the characeters in the book one of three names? YoU dOn'T uNdeRsTanD ThE NaMeS rEprEsEnT ChArAcTeRiStIcS. Yeah I got that too. There are better ways to do that that don't include naming all the characeters the same names.

Reading some of the reviews for this book on Goodreads I feel like the individuals who give this book a 5 star rating fall into 1 of 2 categories. 1: people who actually enjoyed this book (probably 10% of the readers). 2: people who say that they liked this book because they want to sound smart (90% of the readers).

Nothing really happens in this book that makes me care, the plot makes no sense, characters are very confusing, and characeters are not developed. Not even bothering to mention all of the damn incest that takes place in this book.

I'll read his other book but will never reread this book or reccomend it to a friend.