Genre: Literary Fiction
Length: 368 pages
Audiobook Length: 15 hours and 41 minutes
First Published: 1985
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Rachael’s Review
As a teen, Florentino and Fermina fell passionately in love, but Fermina went on to marry a well-respected doctor instead. After her husband’s death, Florentino returns after almost sixty years to declare his love to Fermina once again.
I get why One Hundred Years of Solitude was a bestseller, but I can’t understand why anyone likes this book or how it was an Oprah book club pick. I listened to the audiobook and the struggle was real; it was so long and boring. For every step in the overarching plot, we took two steps back meandering into extremely long backstories of each character. It’s supposed to be a story of a grand love, yet my only thought was: That’s not love. Maybe it got better in the last half of the novel, but I wasn’t willing to stick around to find out.
Publisher’s Description
In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs–yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Florentino purposefully attends the funeral. Fifty years, nine months, and four days after he first declared his love for Fermina, he will do so again.
About Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez was a Colombian author best known for his novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. He died in 2014 at the age of 87.