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I am reviewing the Collected Novellas, not the Collected Stories. Goodreads appears to have combined them into one thread, not knowing there's a difference.
I give "Leaf Storm" only four stars because the shifting narrators and their mild stream of consciousness makes the story a bit more difficult than it's worth. I've read reviews that are quite negative toward "Leaf Storm", but I found the prose excellent and the story quite interesting as we gradually learned the truth of what happened between the doctor and the maid, and for what exact reason the town holds him in contempt. Time has passed slowly, yet events from decades past are as fresh as the town's festering wound left by the departing banana company. I've been a part of funerals such as the doctor's, where I knew that regardless of what I did, how I looked or what my subjective truth was, the townspeople had their minds made up and any observation was used only to confirm their long-held beliefs.
"No One Writes to the Colonel" (five stars!) -- what a powerful story, alternately despairing and hopeful, at turns darkly comedic and tragic. Time is passing too slowly as the colonel and his wife wait to put their deceased son's rooster in a cockfight. Will they run out of food first? They have been abandoned by the government which the colonel fought for and he is holding himself to a code of honor which may kill them.
"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is one of the best novellas I've ever read, a breathless 95 pages that held me in suspense even though it did exactly what it said it would do. Again, various characters are held back by fatigue, sloth or faulty thinking, while a few others are propelled forward by a code of honor they'd rather not uphold. Restrictive gender roles come into play, along with racial prejudice and an apathetic church.
I seem to read a Garcia Marquez book every ten years or so, maybe it's time to pick up my pace. A good friend gave me this book in 2002 and it took me this long to get around to it because my books were packed in boxes as I moved around. I think that she recognized certain characteristics in Garcia Marquez that were similar to how I told stories about my family, particularly deaths, funerals, resentment, and how the past is destructively alive when people hold certain mindsets.
I give "Leaf Storm" only four stars because the shifting narrators and their mild stream of consciousness makes the story a bit more difficult than it's worth. I've read reviews that are quite negative toward "Leaf Storm", but I found the prose excellent and the story quite interesting as we gradually learned the truth of what happened between the doctor and the maid, and for what exact reason the town holds him in contempt. Time has passed slowly, yet events from decades past are as fresh as the town's festering wound left by the departing banana company. I've been a part of funerals such as the doctor's, where I knew that regardless of what I did, how I looked or what my subjective truth was, the townspeople had their minds made up and any observation was used only to confirm their long-held beliefs.
"No One Writes to the Colonel" (five stars!) -- what a powerful story, alternately despairing and hopeful, at turns darkly comedic and tragic. Time is passing too slowly as the colonel and his wife wait to put their deceased son's rooster in a cockfight. Will they run out of food first? They have been abandoned by the government which the colonel fought for and he is holding himself to a code of honor which may kill them.
"Chronicle of a Death Foretold" is one of the best novellas I've ever read, a breathless 95 pages that held me in suspense even though it did exactly what it said it would do. Again, various characters are held back by fatigue, sloth or faulty thinking, while a few others are propelled forward by a code of honor they'd rather not uphold. Restrictive gender roles come into play, along with racial prejudice and an apathetic church.
I seem to read a Garcia Marquez book every ten years or so, maybe it's time to pick up my pace. A good friend gave me this book in 2002 and it took me this long to get around to it because my books were packed in boxes as I moved around. I think that she recognized certain characteristics in Garcia Marquez that were similar to how I told stories about my family, particularly deaths, funerals, resentment, and how the past is destructively alive when people hold certain mindsets.
