#34 One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 417 pages.

This was a large book that took me a month to complete.  I love the way Marquez tells stories, except for this one.  This book was a frustrating book to read, mainly because every character has nearly identical names.  The Buendia family, as they are the central family, name all of the children Jose Arcadio, Ursula, and Aureliano.  After the fifth person named Aureliano appears I began to get confused as to who was related to who, especially as there was incest and one character ended up giving birth to three different generations of Buendias.  I could not keep the geneology of the family straight.  There was a family tree at the beginning of the book, but it was only partial as though it was mocking the reader.  By the time I finished the family tree was  labyrinth of similar sounding names and people.  You can never truly tell how old a character is as one character lives until 146, and is still birthing in her hundreds.

Having finished the last chapter I believe the confusion was intentional, as even the characters do not know their own lineage and begin having carefree incest and have a child born with a tail.  They even actively search their family tree but to no avail and frustration.  At least I wasn't the only one frustrated with knowing who was begat from which character.  I know not...and neither did the characters.  If I had the patience, and right now I don't, I would read this tome again and pay special attention to the character names.  But since it was a rather lengthy book  I will pass on any re-read.

This was an Oprah book selection.  Part of me wants to visit her site and see the comments left my dedicated Oprah-ites and see the praise her followers heap on her for such a sage selection.  But I've already read 417 pages of tiring narrative, I don't think my constitution could bear to read encomiums directed at the genius of Oprah's selection.