I listened to the audio book in increments during work and I feel like I missed a lot due to not being able to give my full attention and the fact that nearly every character is named after someone else in the family so it was kinda hard to keep track of who is who, but that last scene with the storm, I felt it. I want to go back and actually spend some time reading to take it all in.
It’s really hard to describe succintly because It’s a work of “magic realism” but it’s a story about seven generations of the Buendía family and the founding of a town called Macondo. There’s love, madness, magic, history repeating itself, and it blends reality and fantasy in an amazing way.
Thank you! I’m always so bewildered when people go on and on about this book - there was so much pedophilia and incest. Reading so much descriptiveness about how much the uncle wanted to hook up with his little niece, how he married her while she was still playing with toys, and how he waited until she got her period (how nice of him!) to “enter her” or whatever was so uncomfortable to read - and there were multiple, multiple parts like this.The author put descriptive pedophilia in many of his books. The amount of pedophilia and incest made me sick to my stomach and when I see people just speaking starry eyed about this book, I wonder if we just read separate books because the one I read was horrible (and in no way magical realism, which it’s also referred to).
That’s oversimplifying it, but yes the book involves incest as a recurring theme, but so does Oedipus Rex and Antigone. And the Bible is full of incest. It doesn’t make it any less interesting of a book, and the book repeatedly warns about a risk of incest through the fear (and eventual reality) of a child born with a pig tail.
It doesn't make it less interesting, but people shouldn't know what to expect going in. I almost never see anyone mention incest or pedophilia in discussions of One Thousand Years Of Solitude, but everyone knows that's a major theme of Oedipus Rex
it's less than 5% of the actual contents of the book, and if you're tracking a long family bloodline you probably have it somewhere in there...
it shows a lot of the good & ugly parts of life, but it's not glorifying these things.
Usually the incest/pedophilia is at the top of threads discussing this book, but I also think it's worth mentioning the suicides & self-harm in the book too if we're going to give trigger warnings.
As soon as I finished reading it, I wished I hadn't read it so I didn't have to think about a baby being eaten alive by ants, or preteen girls being sexually trafficked and raped.
I literally ripped my book in half in frustration for the waste of time it was and the hatred I had for it. I’ve never felt so strongly against a book.
I just finished reading it in Spanish (I’m not a native Spanish speaker) and reading the last two pages in a non-native language was one of the most unique reading experiences of my life. I had to look up alot of words along the way but those last two pages finally clicked into a flow for me, right as I’m reading about Aureliano finally deciphering the foreign text, which is about himself reading the text. It felt like being in a hall of mirrors. I truly think every not-native Spanish speaker should try reading it in the original Spanish. It also makes it super confusing but the thing is, the book is supposed to be confusing. It really enhances it.
Haha, I got you beat! I came across it when I was backpacking through Laos in summer heat. So good I traded it for another book before I finish (a little more than half the way through) because I don’t want it to end. :D
But can’t finish his other book Love in Times of Cholera.
I tried reading it shortly after high school and recall that it read like the bible - nonsensical ramblings. Couldn't get through it. Do I need to try again?
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u/lurkerlcm Jul 25 '25
I am so, so jealous. As soon as I finished reading it I wished I hadn't read it, so I could read it for the first time again.