Quite possibly the best and most important book I've ever heard.
Up until now the top picks were Lolita, Sons and Lovers, To Kill a Mockingbird ... but ... Gabriel Garcia Marquez... wow.
100 Years of Solitude was similar to Sons and Lovers in that it took me a long time to get into it (I must have started it and restarted it four or five times over the past three years), but once I hit page 70 it was this beautiful, tragic story that just kept building momentum, carried along by the weight of Marquez's masterful storytelling. The last 80 pages took me two weeks to finish because the story could only end one way, and I didn't want it to end. And that's exactly how I felt at the end Sons and Lovers- I just didn't want it to end.
A reviewer from the NY Times wrote in his initial review of the book in 1970 that he thought 100 Years of Solitude should be required reading for the entire human race after the Book of Genesis, and I'd agree. Marquez reminds us of the lessons we've learned throughout our lives without being preachy or paternizing, but rather showing them to us through a kalediscope that separates the lessons into an eternity of mezmerizing reflections and refractions of experiences and emotions that every human being has experienced.
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