There is so much going on in this book that it feels alive.
It eventually will cover several generations of the Buendia family, who have settled in the little village of Macondo after a two-year trek from Colombia, S.A. In brief, Jose Arcadio Buendia convinces some of his neighbors to leave on this journey because he has killed a man who taunted him for not having consummated his marriage with Ursula after almost two years. There’s a whole story to that one that I won’t get into here, although it very well may affect both the family and obviously, has been the cause of their upheaval and new life in a strange place.
There are touches of absurdity that make the story dear to my heart–as well as techniques or skill to set us up for full suspension of belief when for example, the gypsies that regularly visit bring with them a flying carpet. Unless there is an explanation that I haven’t thought of as yet, it is impossible, no? And yet the style of Marquez’s story does not allow me my usual aggravation at finding something not quite copacetic with a consistency of reality. The storyworld is, at this point, growing larger with its boundaries extended to the questionable.
Another point I’ll make in a separate entry is the weaving of the two generations which have been presented, in a way that affects the reading style of the book.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology