BOOKS FIFTEEN AND SIXTEEN- 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE AND NEVER LET ME GO

So I went on vacation recently and managed to read like four books, but only two that were on THE LIST, and had pretty opposite reactions to them, even though I've read them both once before (I know, I know, I keep re-reading, but I owe the vengeful people at the university library late fees and I would prefer to graduate without them knowing about it,  and yes, this does make me a bad person).

So Book Fifteen: 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I love this book. The only word I can think to sum it up in one word is "rich". You get everything in here, every emotion, tragedy, wonder that life can offer you,  passion and despair and ruin and rebirth and magic carpets and crazy ants and a whole lotta incest. What I love about this book is how most novels only follow one main character for a short time in his or her life - anywhere from one day (like Saturday, ugh) and rarely for an entire lifetime. But here we don't just get to see one lifetime, we get to see generations upon generations of them, how past events influence the present and will continue to influence the future, and how wrapped up families are with each other. You get to see how people change, how destiny changes, but everything still comes circling back to the beginning again. It's a wonderful, wonderful study of what it means to be human in this crazy world.

After reading a good book sometimes I have this burning desire to go online and research everything about it, so that's what I did here. Turns out that the town of Macondo is meant to be a representation of the history of Columbia, starting with it's innocent, idyllic time of independence (founding of the town) and detailing it's eventual corruption (the banana company) and demise (the ants, the storm.) This made the story a hell of a lot more interesting to think back on, and I wish I had been more clear on Columbian history when reading it. I'm beginning to sense that Marquez is another one of those clever bastard writers I like so much.

There's nothing I could say that could sum up everything I loved in this book - I could write for page and pages and still wouldn't come close. The depth of emotion and the variety of events will leave you aching and the final pages feel like a hammer coming down on your head. It's one of those book that you feel robbed when you're done with it. I just had to sit there for a few moments and process everything before I could do anything else.

Few impressions:

-The edition of the book that I got my hands on didn't have a family tree in the front. That, as you might imagine, made reading rather interesting.

-The magic realism! Usually it bothers the hell out of me. I get annoyed when all of a sudden these magical events start popping out of nowhere and nobody says a word. But it works here- it's all a part of the initial innocence of the town, how isolated and unreal and beautiful it is, and when Marquez started whipping out the magic carpets and self-navigating blood trails, I didn't even blink.

-Favorite character by far: Ursula. If I am anything like that woman when I get older, then I will be a happy grandma indeed.

-I didn't get how chilling the massacre was the first time around - I think I was too young to fully understand what Marquez was implying. "Always remember that there were more than three thousand and they were thrown in the sea."

-Mauricio Babilonia's butterflies. I don't know why, but that detail always lingers with me long after the book is done. It's just such a quietly powerful image- this man with rough hands haloed in butterflies.

-He puts himself in his book! YOU ARE SO SNEAKY, GABRIEL. I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.

In summary: If I can ever, ever in my life write half as powerfully as Marquez, I will consider myself more than accomplished. This book is a masterpiece.

Book Sixteen: Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

Ah, Never Let Me Go. I remember having such high hopes for you. When I first heard the summary of this book, it was hitting all the right buttons for me. Semi-dystopian alternate universe? Check. Ethically gray area of science? Check. Boarding school shenanigans? Check. Man Booker Prize finalist? Check. I love all those things, and I was ready for a powerhouse of a book, and instead I got this....I don't even know what to call it. It starts off well, and then the story just wilts in front of your eyes.

Now, if you haven't read this book, I'm going to be spoiling you here, so look away. These kids are clones. They are destined to die young as their organs are harvested in forced "donations". They are aware of this and are also fully intelligent, emotional human beings. The idea is great: this story could have easily been an incredibly powerful treatise on human freedom and the struggle for life against forces that want you to lie down on the operating table like a nice little clone while the doctor helps himself to a lung or two. But nothing like that happens. The drama behind this book, the main emotional driver of the story, is a love triangle that can hardly be called passionate, exciting, or even interesting. Our protagonist, Kathy H., is a limp noodle of a person who hardly protests when her (insanely controlling) best friend steals "the love of her life" out from under her nose, and continues to not make a peep about this for oh, about eight years or so. Meanwhile, everyone is happily chatting about art and frolicking in the woods, seemingly very nonplussed about the fact that they have a death sentence above their heads. Yes, yes, they were conditioned to believe there must be no other way, but there are several scenes where Kathy or other characters wonder about the fairness of it all, but there's no fire, there's no sense of self-preservation, except in the one memorable scene with Tommy (who I liked most out of all of them) which Kathy is completely bewildered by. They're like cattle being led to the slaughter. Maybe Ishiguro's trying to make a point about quiet desperation here, but it's very, very quiet indeed.

Anyways, the book started to get a little interesting at the end, with Madame and Miss Emily's speeches. I would like a whole book about those women; they at least seem to have been doing something to stop human beings from being treated like organ farms. Even the end, when Kathy and Tommy finally consummate their age-old love - which, I remind you, was the focus of the entire book - they just have some passionless sex, chat, play some checkers, and then Tommy is killed without a lot of fuss from anyone, especially Kathy. Oh well, these things happen? What?!


In summary: This book is well written and engrossing, but in the end leaves you with nothing worthwhile, no sense of struggle, and no sympathy for characters that should seem very sympathetic indeed. All the books I love best make me feel, but this book only made me feel one thing: frustration.

Edit: Just read some of the amazon.com reviews of this book, which all speak to its mesmerizing "story between the lines" and narrative about "wasted lives." When I read a book, I want a story, not a story that lurks so far between the lines it becomes almost invisible. Sorry, guys - I get what you mean about the wasted lives, but did we really have to read an entire book about Hailsham rumors and silly misunderstandings to get there?