In this collection of three short novels, “Leaf Storm” appeared first, but I read it last because it took me a few tries to get into. It was somewhat difficult to read, not in the least because there were three different first-person narrators who would take over for each other at every section break, and I often didn’t realize the narrator had changed until the little boy suddenly started referring to his late wife and it occurred to me that the little boy was no longer speaking, his grandfather was. That’s a sign of one of two things: either I wasn’t reading closely enough, which is totally possible, because “Leaf Storm” was a very slow, meditative story that I mostly read at night while nearly asleep. Or, the voices weren’t distinguished enough by the narration. This would not necessarily be a slur on Marquez, because the book is obviously a translation of what Marquez actually wrote. Perhaps there were linguistic markers which would have differentiated the voices from each other if I had read the book in its native Spanish.

The second novella was “No One Writes to the Colonel,” an incredibly bleak story about a older couple struggling to make ends meet while they wait for the husband’s military pension, which is apparently something like thirty years late in coming. In the meantime, they are raising a rooster that they hope to make some money off of via cockfights. The wife is sick, they’re both starving, and things just stay the same. Their circumstances change for the worse—move laterally at best.

The great redeeming story was the third, “Chronicles of a Death Foretold.” The basic story is about a small town that is shaken up when two brothers kill another young man of their acquaintance, due to a misunderstanding about their sister and her virginity. What was really amazing about it was the narrative choice—it unfolds like a documentary, with an unidentified narrator describing the process of collecting eyewitness accounts and piecing the story together. The story opens with the murder, and then moves backwards and forwards in time depending on whose perspective we’re getting at that moment. Here’s a sample:

Victoria Guzman, for her part, had been categorical with her answer that neither she nor her daughter knew that the men were waiting for Santiago Nasar to kill him. But in the course of her years she admitted that both knew it when he came into the kitchen to have his coffee. They had been told it by a woman who had passed by after five o’clock to beg a bit of milk, and who in addition had revealed the motives and the place where they were waiting. “I didn’t warn him because I thought it was drunkards’ talk,” she told me. Nevertheless, Divina Flor confessed to me on a later visit, after her mother had died, that the latter hadn’t said anything to Santiago Nasar because in the depths of her heart she wanted them to kill him. She, on the other hand, didn’t warn him because she was nothing but a frightened child at the time, incapable of a decision of her own, and she’d been all the more frightened when he grabbed her by the wrist with a hand that felt frozen and stony, like the hand of a dead man.

The documentarian has the greatest storytelling challenge of any filmmaker, because he or she has to take a huge amount of information and characters and events and draw a relatively straight narrative line through it. The choice made by Marquez—to imagine a whole outside context for this story of some guy making an exhaustive investigation into this event via interviews, anecdotes, paperwork—is amazingly effective. And he uses it with such a light touch. It reminds me of all those novels from the 19th century that claim to have been compiled from letters found in mysterious diaries and stuff, just because it was in vogue at the time to pretend you found your story instead of creating it in your own head. I like these kinds of techniques, because they don’t fence in the story. This one bleeds out in all directions. It’s saturated with context, with different paths, with inner lives. In short, it’s wonderful.

Beautiful writing. I loved his style even though this collection of short stories is about some depressing times and death.

I thought I’d like his shorter works more because I’ve only read his really long books, but alas, I did not. I really like the ending of all of his stories but I always just get so bored in the beginning and middle.

Chronicle is the best one here

All three novellas were wonderfully structured. It showed a deeper, truthful side of humanity. It was overall great.

I read 'No One Writes to the Colonel' because Marquez considered it his best.

I found it despondent, which it's supposed to be, and much preferred One Hundred Years of Solitude, which was comic and uplifting while also being sombre.

Perhaps I will give it another try in a few more years!

"Leaf Storm": this story strikes me as quite Faulknerian in style and descriptively rooted in a setting defined by its townsfolk, but less developed in characterization.

Almost on every page, I had to remind myself I was reading and to pay attention. I chose gabriel garcia marquez because he is a classic name in the literary canon but I am not quite sure what I gained from reading this collection. Not a fan. I was reading a book a week and then I got to this and kept avoiding it.

I loved "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" so far. It's such a precise and bittersweet story of a poor guy who knows he's about to die....and of life's absurdities.

This book contains three short stories by Colombian born Nobel Prize winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Gabriel had said, “I feel that all my writing has been about experiences of the time I spent with my grandparents.”
This is clear after reading this book. I give the book 3-stars (out of 5) but who is to say I am right to gip it out of two extra stars. To each his own opinion. After all, the author has been referred to as a master storyteller who, as the New York Review of Books once said, “forces upon us at every page the wonder and extravagance of life.”

The three novellas in this book were rather depressing but he does paint a picture with his words, taking you to the small, dusty impoverished towns. Frankly, a lot of it was boring. I visited the UNESCO town of Zacatecas, Mexico back in August 2017 and the settings of his stories reminded me of this town. I actually love Zacatecas . It’s like going back in time and that’s exactly what these novellas succeed in doing. Anyway, I doubt I will be seeking out more writings from Garcia Marquez (but I may be willing to see the 2007 film, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA which is based on his novel. I’d much rather re-read the classic A DEATH IN THE SANCHEZ FAMILY by Oscar Lewis.

It’s clear that I liked Novella 2 best (NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL) as it seemed to have more profound words to dwell on and the dialogue was rather compelling.

Novella 1: LEAF STORM: This story centered on the funeral of a doctor who was loathed in town as he hid from others and refused to help people given his obvious medical expertise. Lines I found interesting:

“You’ll wallow in your bed like a pig in its sty.”

She planted a grapevine beside the branches and hung a clump of sabita and a loaf of bread by the street door to protect herself against evil thoughts.

When something moves you can tell that time has passed.

He had the dreamy and fatigued expression of a man who doesn’t know what his life will be from one minute to the next and hasn’t got the least interest in finding out.

I heard his voice, deep, convincing, gentle: “Count seven stars and you’ll dream about me.”

Father Angel doesn’t seem to have any other satisfaction except savoring the preserving indigestion of meatballs every day during his siesta.

Novella 2: NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL: This story centered on a lowly couple trying to make ends meet as they hold hope from the rooster in their home. The husband kept hoping for a pension check in the mail that would never come. Lines I found interesting:

“It’s winter,” the woman replied, “Since it began raining I’ve been telling you to sleep with your socks on.”

He had been converted into a man with no other occupation than waiting for the mail every Friday.

“Humanity doesn’t progress without paying a price.”

“To the Europeans, South America is a man with a mustache, a guitar, and a gun,” the doctor said, laughing over his newspaper.

“That’s the way it is,” he said, “Human ingratitude knows no limits.”

“You haven’t the slightest sense for business,” she said. “When you go to sell something, you have to put on the same face as when you go to buy.”

Novella 3: CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD: With quite a cast of characters this story eventually guided the reader into a murder by twin brothers who were out for revenge on the man who attacked their sister. Lines I found interesting:

“Any dream about birds means good health.”

“My mother taught me never to talk about money in front of other people.”

“When you sacrifice a steer you don’t dare look into its eyes.” One of them told me that he couldn’t eat the flesh of an animal he had butchered. Another said that he wouldn’t be capable of sacrificing a cow if he’d known it before, much less if he’d drunk its milk.

She’d always felt that only children are capable of everything.

They married among themselves, imported their wheat, raised lambs in their yards, and grew oregano and eggplants, and playing cards was their only driving passion.

She then discovered that hate and love are reciprocal passions.

The whole family slept until twelve o’clock…”that’s why Flora Miguel, who wasn’t that young anymore, was preserved like a rose.”

I haven't been blown away by pure literature like this in a while. And when I sat down to parse through Leaf Storm, No One Writes to the Colonel and Chronicle of a Death Foretold, I couldn't help but think it was three stories, three writing styles, but in the same location. Write about what you know, I suppose, but this isn't a bad thing—you try writing three completely different novels about the same place in the same time period but with wildly different styles, and make it as good as these.

As a good friend said to me, "Now imagine how good they'd be in his native language!"

Leaf Storm, I imagine, can be off-putting to some people. There are three narrators: a grandfather, his daughter and her son. Yet with some exceptions, each break within a chapter (or each chapter itself) is from a different perspective than the previous, and you aren't immediately told who is the new narrator. But Márquez writes in such a way that it typically only took me two pages to link the new perspective to the previous and to the story, and to figure out who the new narrator was. It's full of dark themes, but his magical realism (which really is the best way to describe it) often puts you more in awe than worry. Sorta like watching your first David Bowie music video.

No One Writes to the Colonel was, in an understatement, a bit of a downer. It's also the kind of story bursting with symbolism (although, to be fair, all of his are) that an entire class could be taught on this one story. I think that's probably why I didn't like it quite as much as the other two (not to say I disliked it, though) — this story in particular is dense and sad, and like in real life, doesn't have a picture-perfect ending.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is by far the curveball among the three. I went into this story fresh off the last, and didn't know what to expect. It's written in a very similar approach to some Sherlock Holmes novels, except here you know exactly what happened and whodunit. This may seem boring, but it's a slow-burn story that just gets better as it goes along. Like with Leaf Storm, this is one where the actual story only takes place in a short span of time, but there are always other stories to hear first.

Marquez is at it again, spinning yarns like only he can.