One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa
I can safely say that I have never read anything like this book before. I thought that I understood the genre of magic realism prior to reading this, but it turns out that wasn’t quite true. Had I the task of explaining the traits of the genre to someone who hadn’t heard of it before, I should rather hand them a copy of this book.
To summarize the story would actually be quite simple. The book tells the of the Buendía family’s history in the town of Macondo. But to summarize the uniqueness and appeal of this book is much harder.
Is it possible to explain something that you can’t put into words? I feel that the only way that I can convey my appreciation for the book is by lifting three images from the book itself that have made a distinct impression on my memory.
1. Before them, surrounded by ferns and palm trees, white and powdery in the silent morning light, was an enormous Spanish galleon. Tilted slightly to the starboard, it had hanging from its intact masts the dirty rags of its sails in the midst of its rigging, which was adorned with orchids. The hull, covered with an armor of petrified barnacles and soft moss, was firmly fastened into a surface of stones. The whole structure seemed to occupy its own space, one of solitude and oblivion, protected from the vices of time and the habits of the birds. Inside, where the expeditionaries explored with careful intent, there was nothing but a thick forest of flowers. (11-12)
2. A short time later, when the carpenter was taking measurements for the coffin, through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling. They fell on the town all through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roof and blocked the doors and smothered the animals who slept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so the funeral procession could pass by. (140)
3. The yellow butterflies would invade the house at dusk. (I would expand on this, but I don’t want to give away important plot points!)
In addition to these kinds of images that run throughout the narrative, I feel that another unique aspect of this book is its structure. At one point in the story, the character Ursula “shudder[s] with the evidence that time was not passing, as she had just admitted, but that it was turning in a circle” (335). This statement gives a good idea of the overall narrative style. García Márquz often reveals the outcome of a situation long before the reader is aware of the circumstances or relevance of this disclosure, and it often isn’t until much later that the story circles around to explain these circumstances. In this way, the novel gives the impression of moving linearly through the family history of the Buendía family while simultaneously drifting backwards and forwards through time.
I definitely recommend this one.
Letters of Virginia Woolf
The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Volume I: 1888 – 1912 (Virginia Stephen)
Edited by Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann
Originally published in England as The Flight of Mind
The reason I read this book is quite simple: I love Virginia Woolf. I’m slowly making my way through everything she wrote, and I hadn’t read any of her personal writing before this book. I was originally going to start with her diaries, but the letters begin when she was younger so they seemed like a more logical place to start. Besides, I’ve been having difficulty finding copies of them, so I wanted to read at least the first volume while I had access to my university library.
There are 638 letters included in this volume. The first was written to her godfather when she was only six years old, and the last when she was thirty on the day before her wedding to Leonard Woolf. I would guess that the majority of letters in this collection were written to her older, close friend Violet Dickinson. Indeed, Virginia wrote to Violet so frequently for much of this period of her life, that it is possible to get a good sense of her day-to-day life from these letters.
What struck me the most from reading these letters was how Virginia’s voice spoke to me so clearly across the years. Even though these letters are old, and Virginia Woolf has since passed on, and the letters were not written for me in the first place, I feel as though I have become her correspondent in a very one-sided exchange. Reading her letters makes years separating the moment when she laid her words on paper with pen and ink, and the the day when I picked up a copy of this book, typeset and bound, collapse and fold up like a telescope. She can travel time to speak to me as though we were only separated by distance.
A true letter, so my theory runs, should be as a film of wax pressed close to the graving in the mind; but if I followed my own prescription this sheet would be scored with some very tortuous and angular incisions. Let me explain that I began some minutes since to review a novel and made its faults, by a process common among minds of a certain order or disorder, the text for a soliloquy upon many matters of importance; the sky and the breeze were part of my theme. A telegram however, with its necessary knock and its flagrant yellow, and its curt phrase of vicious English — I know not which sense was most offended — hit me in the wing and I fell a heaped corpse on the earth. The sense, if that can be said to have sense which has so little sound, was to discredit the respectability of a house in Fitzroy Square. And there you see me in the mud.
- to Clive Bell, February 1907
The Rebel Angels
The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies
Book One in the Cornish Trilogy
I read this on the recommendation of a friend, who mentioned that the book is set at a Toronto university. This was one of the main draws for me, because I’m almost always interested in reading about scholarship, and academic intrigue. I’d enjoyed Fifth Business when I read it a few years ago, so I was familiar with Davies and already knew I liked his style. Besides, I always feel vaguely guilty for not reading more written by Canadian authors, and am trying to read more.
Until I was about two thirds of the way through the book, I probably couldn’t have told you what I thought the plot was, and once I did get to that point, the story took veered off in a completely unexpected direction. Basically though, the book deals with the interactions between several professors at this unnamed Toronto university, an old acquaintance many of them went to school with, and a graduate student they all teach.
One of my favourite things about this novel was the way Davies told the story alternating from the perspectives of the grad student Maria Magdelena Theotoky, and one of her teachers, professor and priest Simon Darcourt. I often rather dislike this, but I felt that in this case it was both well done, and that it added to the overall mood of the book. I liked that their narratives overlapped enough to demonstrate their different interpretations of the same events, and diverged enough to move the story along and keep things interesting. I also really enjoyed reading about the academic pursuits of all the various characters, and about the passion and mystery that came about as a result of their rather intense academic devotion.
Autumn, to me the most congenial of seasons: the University, to me the most congenial of lives. In all my years as a student and later as a university teacher I have observed that university terms tend to begin on a fine day. As I walked down the avenue of maples that leads toward the University Bookstore I was as happy as I suppose it is in my nature to be; my nature tends toward happiness, or toward enthusiastic industry, which for me is the same thing.
Written on the Body
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
I haven’t entirely made up my mind about this book. I decided to read it because a couple of the girls I was friends with in one of my English classes last Fall raved about it. I can see why they love it, and I can also see why I could love it, but I’m not sure if I even like it all that much. Perhaps this is one of those instances when seeing the value in something is quite different from enjoying it. I think I could really benefit from a solid treatment of it in class, or at least some discussion on it.
The book details the romantic relationship that develops between the unnamed, gender-ambiguous narrator and a beautiful married woman named Louise. The main thing that stood out to me when I first started reading was the precise and beautiful writing. This carried me through approximately the first third of the book, and then I started feeling bored and irritated.
I think that part of what bothered me about the book was that it seemed much more a statement, argument, or commentary on society than an actual story. It’s not that I think that novels should be only about character and plot, but I don’t think that those elements should get thrown into the backseat while political agenda hops into the driver’s side and takes off. I like a little more subtlety, the interweaving of all the different elements that make up a story.
Because I felt that the characters weren’t developed very fully, I felt uncomfortable reading the details of their romantic relationship. I’ve never encountered this before. Often, I identify with at least one of the characters, or, failing that, I feel that I’ve been invited to read, to learn about their lives. Reading this book made me feel like an intruder, like I was reading someone else’s embarrassingly personal diary without permission.
The other result of the flat characters for me was that I just didn’t care about them. There isn’t much of a plot to speak of, so if you don’t care about what happens to the characters, that’s pretty much all there is. Besides the fantastic writing, of course.
I feel that I might have just been in the wrong frame of mind for the book. I can’t summarize my opinion into a recommendation this time because I’m still undecided. I do have a suspicion that this will be one of those books that stays with me. Maybe I’ll re-read this in a few years and decide then.
Articulacy of fingers, the language of the deaf and dumb, signing on the body longing. Who taught you to write in blood on my back? Who taught you to use your hands as branding irons? You have scored your name into my shoulders, referenced me with your mark. The pads of your fingers have become printing blocks, you tap a message on to my skin, tap meaning into my body. Your morse code interferes with my heart beat. I had a steady heart beat before I met you, I relied on it, it had seen active service and grown strong. Now you alter its pace with your own rhythm, you play upon me, drumming me taut.
White Oleander
White Oleander by Janet Fitch
Once I had finished Cloud Atlas, I had no idea what to read next. I often find it really difficult to follow up a fantastic book. I’m never sure if it would be better to raise the stakes by reading something that I know can compete with the quality of the book I just finished, or if I should just read something short and fun that I don’t have high expectations for. Sometimes, I wonder if I would have liked perfectly okay or even solidly good books better if I hadn’t read them on the tail of excellent ones.
This time I decided to re-read an old favourite. I’d been thinking about the protagonist of the novel, Astrid, for some time, so I decided just to go for it. I was a bit hesitant to re-read this one though, just because it spoke to me so deeply the first time I read it. Re-reading can be disappointing, and I really didn’t want to ruin my memories of the book.
As it turns out, I wasn’t disappointed at all. There’s something about this book that catches hold of me, and just doesn’t let go. It’s the story, but also the prose. Fitch’s writing style is like reading a 450-page prose-poem. When I was reading the book I found myself savouring every word like a morsel of delicious food, letting them melt on my tongue. I felt that Fitch chose each of her words with the care a fine jeweller would take when selecting precious stones for a necklace.
The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I. I woke up at midnight to find her bed empty. I climbed to the roof, and easily spotted her blond hair like a white flame in the light of the three-quarter moon.
Bridget Jones
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
Re-reading this was completely inspired by a Bridget Jones movie night plus chips and pickle dip (which, I’m pretty sure, is the only correct way to watch Bridget Jones). Can it be true – I think I actually prefer the movie to the book!
Interesting fact: when I read the diary in the ninth grade, I remember that all the records of her weight were meaningless to me as the measurements were all given in stones. In the copy I read this time, her weight is recorded in pounds. Was this changed for the American reprint?
“That is just such crap,” I slurred. “How dare you be so fraudulently flirtatious, cowardly, and dysfunctional? I am not interested in emotional fuckwittage. Good-bye.”
It was great. You should have seen his face. But now I am home I am sunk into gloom. I may have been right, but my reward, I know, will be to end up all alone, half-eaten by an Alsatian.
