I was a bit reticent of writing about "One Hundred Years of Solitude", as it seemed quite unusual, at least compared to the other books that I've read. First of all, it reminded me of those texts from school, full of symbols and metaphors - and not that much action, where you had to pay attention to some details as they provided important clues for understanding the overall book. Of course, this is not that bad, but it takes some time to adjust to the style.

The first hundred pages or so were very hard to read and follow. The fact that there are many characters, spread across generations, which have similar names (which are repeated from one generation to another) doesn't make things a lot easier to follow either. But when I was half through the book, I started to get captivated by it, especially about the parts where the imaginary invaded the reality. Why was Mauricio Babilonia followed by butterflies? What do the yellow flowers mean? The novel is full of symbols like these, which might be random, or might fit somewhere.

The passing of time is one of the main themes - but it's not how most of us perceive it, as a normal, steady flow - instead it can stop, it can loop or it can just pass for some while standing still for others. I liked how Melquíades' room seemed frozen in time for some, while completely devastated by the years for others.

For me, it left the impression that we can be very easily imprisoned by the monotony of every day life, unless we don't have some craziness and appetite for magic - in all it's forms - which can spice our lives and break the chains of repetitive life. By all looks, Melquíades appears to have succeeded in this, but maybe he wasn't doomed from the beginning.

Macondo reminded me of the classic small city, forgotten by any major roads, where time passes in a different manner. People are different - maybe apparently more simple, as they are not rushed by anything and they are not affected by complex circumstances - because of this, the entire city seems different as it constantly drains the emotions and energy from those alive.

There were also a few quotes which I really liked and I'd like to add here.

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, General Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his fathertook him to discover ice."

"They felt that they had been the victims of some new and showy gypsy business and they decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."

"The world must be all fucked up when men travel first class and literature goes as freight."

"Carmelia Montiel, a twenty-year-old virgin, had just bathed in orange-blossom water and was strewing rosemary leaves on Pilar Ternera's bed when the shot rang out. Aureliano José had been destined to find with her the happiness that Amaranta had denied him, to have seven children, and to die in her arms of old age, but the bullet that entered his back and shattered his chest had been directed by a wrong interpretation of the cards."

"He had not stopped desiring her for a single instant. He found her in the dark bedrooms of captured towns, especially in the most abject ones, and he would make her materialize in the smell of dry blood on the bandages of the wounded, in the instantaneous terror of the danger of death, at all times and in all places. He had fled from her in an attempt to wipe out her memory, not only through distance but by means of a muddled fury that his companions at arms took to be boldness, but the more her image wallowed in the dunghill of war, the more the war resembled Amaranta. That was how he suffered in exile, looking for a way of killing her with his own death."

"Shit!" she shouted. Amaranta, who was starting to put the clothes into the trunk, thought that she had been bitten by a scorpion. "Where is it?" she asked in alarm. "What?" "The bug!" Amaranta said. Úrsula put a finger on her heart. "Here," she said."

"The gypsy [Melquíades] came to the village, decided to stay here. He went into the world of the dead, but he came back as he couldn't stand the solitude. Banished from his tribe or, stripped by any supernatural power as a punishment for his fidelity for life, he decided to seek refuge in this corner of the Earth, not yet discovered by death, in order to construct a daguerreotype laboratory." (translated)

I enjoyed this book a lot and I have this feeling that it will be one of the books that will always remain in my head. I'm quite sure that I missed a lot of it, since it seems quite complex in some parts and definitively not straightforward. But after all, that's probably one of the good things, as it never ceases to surprise you.