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Title: Chronicle of a Death Foretold by GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ ISBN: 1-4000-3471-X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 07 October, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.06 (81 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A good place for anyone interested in Marquez to start.
Comment: Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most genuinely artistic of 20th century authors. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" was the first of his books that I read and while I loved the story there were times when the sheer size, scope and density of that work was very intimidating. It wasn't until my second reading that I was able to fully digest the power of the book and appreciate the consumate artistry it embodied. For those who want a little bit of a lighter introduction to Marquez, "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is a good place to look.
The story is deceptively simple: A young girl in a South American village (a setting almost all Marquez's works share) is married and it is found that she has already lost her virginity. Her brothers are then bound by honor to kill the man responsible, an act they have no interest in doing but do nonetheless because no one will stop them. I am giving nothing away here, all the details of the story are revealed in the first few pages. What elevates this simple story to the grand level of all Marquez works is the brilliant structure and execution. Marquez succeeds, as always, in putting a fresh spin on a timeless plot.
Marquez gives us the events leading up to the murder from several different angles and with each different angle a new wrinkle in the fabric of the story unfolds. What we learn is that there scarcely a person in the whole town who could not have helped rescue the victim from his early end. The killers did not hide their mission, on the contrary they announced it to whoever crossed their path and delayed the doing of the deed until they could not wait any longer. It is this fact which sticks with the reader of the book long after he has finished reading and Marquez explores the question of responsibility at length.
I recommend that "Chronicle of Death Foretold" be read as an intro to Marquez and if you like it then move on to the more imposing works like "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Autumn of the Patriarch". For those Marquez fans who have not "Chronicle of Death Foretold" yet, I encourage them to do so right away. It easily hold up to his best material, even within its smaller framework.
Rating: 4
Summary: Engaging story about fate, love, women, and culture
Comment: This novella just grabs you and sucks you in until you've finished the last page. I read this book for a book club and I think I enjoyed it even more because I had a chance to discuss the engaging language and themes with other readers. After all, there's so much to be said about characters such as Angela Vicario, whose mother said that her daughters were perfect because "any man will be happy with them because they've been raised to suffer." The depiction of women and love is not unique to the Latin American culture, but Gabriel Garcia Marquez's language makes it more vivid and captivating. The story is apparently based loosely on a true event, which makes it all the more intriguing. It's about a man whose imminent death is discussed throughout the town that he lives in, yet no one is able to stop it or at least warn him about it. I started reading it and got to around page 15 when I realized I wasn't paying enough attention and had to start over again from the beginning. I've heard of quite a few people getting off to a slow start with it. There are a lot of different names thrown at you, and though it's a chronicle, it's not chronological, so it's a story that needs to be read with some focus. Once you're in that focused mindset though, it's a quick read and I highly recommend it.
Rating: 4
Summary: Fuenteovejuna did it ?
Comment: How can an author keep the reader interested in his book when he gives away the ending in the first page?. Well, he needs to be an extraordinary writer, with the ability to enthrall the reader completely. Of course, not everybody can do that, but the truth is that the author of this book isn't "everybody". Gabriel García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, and he clearly deserved it. You can easily see that if you read some of the many master pieces he wrote: this is just one of them.
"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" has many ingredients that make it a wonderful book. In my opinion the most important ones are García Marquez's brilliant prose, and the risk he took by doing the unthinkable: bluntly telling the reader the end of the story in the first pages of the book. However, I think I should also highlight that the story itself is excellent: a wedding, a bride returned to her family in disgrace, her brothers forced by their code of honor to kill her previous lover, and announcing to all that want to hear them that they intend to do so. This is indeed the "Chronicle of a Death Foretold"... Everyone knows who is going to die, except for the intended victim and his mother.
On the whole, this book is incredibly good and somewhat picturesque. The story takes place many years ago, in a provincial town with different values from those we have nowadays, and García Márquez manages to make the reader understand that. I couldn't ignore the sense of fatalism that pervades the book, probably due to the fact that something is already certain: things will turn out badly in the end.
Despite that, even though we know from the first page what is going to happen, we still want to find out why did it happen. There is another pertinent question: who were the culprits?. The girl's brothers or the whole town, that knowing what they were going to do didn't stop them?. In Lope de Vega's words, I believe that "Fuenteovejuna did it"... But that is merely a personal opinion.
My advice?. Buy this book, read it, and reach your own conclusions. You are highly likely to enjoy the process :)
Belen Alcat
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Title: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ISBN: 0140119906 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ISBN: 0060932678 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Edith Grossman ISBN: 0140256369 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende ISBN: 0553273914 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 July, 1986 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ISBN: 0060929790 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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