Gabriel García-Márquez, Magically

Can a village be a character in a novel? The longer I sit with Gabriel García-Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude, the more I’m convinced that the answer is “yes.”

One Hundred Years was part of last year’s reading project, but only the first chapter, so I was eager to finish this one when I had a chance. It came relatively late in the project (Week 47 of 52), during the week of magical realism, but since we only read the first chapter we saw very little magic. It only emerges as the book progresses.

Set in a fictional Colombian town, the story opens with an army colonel facing a firing squad—who, in that moment, remembers the day his father took him to see ice for the first time. This memory gives way to the story of the father, José Arcadio, and his fascination with every invention the gypsies bring to his village on their annual visits: a telescope one year, an astrolabe and compass another. Each one was going to change the life of his family, until it was relegated to the shed when the next life-changing invention took its place. But this man, as distractible as he was, had led a group to establish a village by a river. This is Macondo.

José Arcadio, the father, has a wife Úrsula, two sons, another José Arcadio and Aureliano, and a daughter Amaranta. The story follows generations of the family as they grow up, build families, fight wars, leave and return. And the town? Macondo starts with a few homes scratched out from the jungle, and it grows and changes as the family does. The family is always in tension, too, with the first two brothers completely different in temperament, one a thinker and leader, one of more earthy desires, artistic and thoughtful but tremendously tough.

And so this novel follows the family through that tension, of being pulled back to Macondo and then thrust out, of quiet isolation and becoming the social center of the town. Of being its enemy and its best advocate. Throughout the generations, most of the characters share only a few names, Aureliano and Arcadio being the vast majority of them. There’s a family tree that I referenced repeatedly so I could figure out which person from which generation was who—not easy when these names were in each generation multiple times.

Like most multigenerational novels, there’s a kind of sweep to this story. It’s a dreamlike feeling, almost a fugue, in which you start believing that things will be both exactly the same and yet unthinkable different in the future, because while there is plenty of action in the book, it’s almost as if there is no plot. I think it’s the combination of the same names and a kind of cyclical rhythm that set this tone, this impression that everything in this book, and in Macondo, is ephemeral.

And the magic. This book truly is magical realism, but it sneaks up on you, unremarked upon by either the characters or the narrator. There’s almost no magic in the first chapter, so the turn toward the fantastic happens almost without your realizing it. Then you look around and finally realize how truly odd this “place” is.

This isn’t a book about spells or using the supernatural to accomplish things. Instead, odd and unexplained things happen throughout the story: the wreck of a galleon in the middle of the jungle, a mother who lives on and on and on, the blood that takes a precise and uphill trip away from an executed man, the five-year rainstorm that follows the deaths of three thousand plantation workers. My personal favorite was the car mechanic who had kaleidoscopes of butterflies (yes, the actual word for a group!) appear wherever he went.

But all of this brings us back to Macondo itself. We see it born, with a few huts on a riverbank. We watch it become a prosperous village that even attracts a railroad line. That line becomes a link to the world, bringing thousands of people including banana plantation executives and workers along with their families. We watch them be killed or driven out, watch Macondo fade, watch the jungle eventually claim the space again. And any trace of Macondo disappears—but did it ever really exist?

And that’s why I can’t help wondering if the real main character in One Hundred Years isn’t the town itself, all the Aurelianos and Arcadios swarming through like so many butterflies.

The dreamlike tone (I know I keep using that word!) might be off-putting if you are used to action-packed novels and concrete ideas. This is a book that rewards settling in and being willing to float along in a long, strange trip. It’s the kind of book that I don’t think I would have cared for a couple of years ago, but I’ve taught myself to slow down. In that slowing, I was rewarded with a novel that feels like it will always be a part of me now.