Fridge / One Hundred Years of Solitude

Fridge Brilliance

• This review on Amazon, by Amanda M. Hayes, states that the reason the book is so insane is 'cause the entire Buendía family is the protagonist. It all makes sense now!
  • Family novels weren't a rarity even in realism.
• If like many people you read this book at a young age, the insomnia plague will just be strange disease. But read it again, knowing about Alzheimer's Disease... and semantic dementia. Makes more sense now, don't it?
• This novel either makes more sense if you know about other books of Gabriel García Márquez, or makes his other books have more sense. One event mentioned in the passing in the book, the very lavish funeral of Mama Grande, the madame of one of the brothels of Macondo, is both the title of both a short story and the book containing it. The short story shows that the woman was so influential and the event was so big that no one could have ignored it, but points that the Buendía family has very little to have with the deceased. Another book have a short story about a very old Rebeca de Buendía still refusing to sell her house, pointing reasons that are only understandable if you know her novel's backstory.
• "Buendia" is Spanish for "good day". The Buendias, all members and the family itself, get their shot at glory and greatness, and then it's gone, and their lives are either suddenly cut off or slowly rot away through decadence.
• Macondo is described as a city of mirrors. The theme of mirrors is explored in the novel:
  • A mirror represents vanity, and all the members of the Buendia family are self-absorbed to some degree, eccentric at best and arrogant at worst.
  • A mirror casts reflections, which serves as a copy and parallel. The Buendia family is caught in a loop of events repeating each other and family members resembling each other (ancestors/descendants and siblings).
  • A mirror image is ultimately an illusion and a mirage. Macondo is caught between fantasy and reality, with most of its residents not knowing or caring what is real and what isn’t.
• The last line in the novel is a title drop and one of Melquiades’ prophecies: “Races condemned to a hundred years of solitude do not get a second chance on earth.” This prophecy is deciphered at the very end of Macondo by the last Buendia.