Tag intergenerational

The Illustrated cover in many shades of green with a yellow snake and a purple bird evokes the tropical setting of the book.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Kristen B. Leave a comment
The Illustrated cover in many shades of green with a yellow snake and a purple bird evokes the tropical setting of the book.

by Kristen B.

My book club (Books on Tap) left for our August summer break on something of an odd note. At a previous meeting, we had a discussion about adapting books to TV shows and movies. I had recently read glowing reviews of the Netflix adaption of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I proposed reading the Latin American classic. Everyone agreed that it had been awhile since we tackled something, perhaps, weightier, and – per usual for this great group of people – they were game to try.

I had read and loved this book in college, when I was in the practice of reading complicated, challenging material. While I still enjoyed the book this time around, I definitely found it more difficult to read decades later. The full immersion into the Buendia family and the village of Macondo remained the same, enchantingly so. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is credited with inventing modern magical realism, where the odd and inexplicable are part of every day life.

The family was trickier this time around, with the generations sharing names and attributes. I – and my book club folks – got too caught up in trying to keep everyone straight. In talking about it, though, we realized that’s one of the joys of this inter-generational story. It’s as though your grandma or some other older relative is telling you the family history, with asides and doubling back and other random diversions before actually getting to the point. It’s not really necessary that you keep the Aurelianos, Jose Arcadios, and Ursulas straight because the novel moves in circular patterns more than as a linear “and then” plot. We were less thrilled with a rather dated assumption that the patriarchy meant that men could marry whomever they pleased, even barely adolescent girls and despite mistresses.

The particular smaller stories, though, share in all of humanity’s troubles and joys, often humorously so – the insomnia plague, the visiting gypsies who bring the miracles of magnets and ice to Macondo, the coming of the railroad and banana company, the feuds, and the love affairs. All of it mixed into a sort of memory soup filled with revolution, politics, and the destructive nature of colonialism and classism. It’s been called the Great Novel of the Americas, and I would agree with that assessment. There’s something quintessentially Latin American about the story, and absolutely universal about the way it is told. I was reminded of the spider from my family’s camping trip with Scouts that gets a little bit bigger every time the story is recounted, or the number of pies my grandmother would bake during the summer, or any other number of embellishments to tried-and-true chestnuts of familial tales.

If, however, the book doesn’t suit your current reading tastes – as many people found at book club – Netflix recently released the first half of an almost perfect adaptation of the book, with the second season coming soon, hopefully in 2026. Being able to see Macondo and its inhabitants helps keep it all straight, without losing any of the wonder or weirdness of the book. The voiceover of descriptions and commentary are taken directly from the original text, and it’s a perfect way to meld the classic novel with the new medium. The cast does a perfect job of inhabiting the characters and their often exasperated relationships. While the show’s original language is Spanish, the dubbing was not distracting. It’s also a rather frankly spicy (would be R-rated) depiction of various lovers and marriages. I hope it becomes available on DVD or via Kanopy soon, as it’s the perfect complement to the book.

Re-examining classics is always worthwhile to me, because the books may not change but we do as readers. I had memories of enjoying One Hundred of Solitude but couldn’t remember why. The town of Macondo, isolated in the jungle, and the Buendia family once again live in my imagination, and I am glad for it – if for different reasons than when I was in college.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is available in translation to English in print and as an e-audiobook. It is also available in Spanish.

Kristen B. is a devoted bookworm lucky enough to work as the graphic designer for HCLS. She likes to read, stitch, dance, and watch baseball (but not all at the same time).

Deep green mountains fade to brilliant yellow and orange to the top and bottom of the cover. Dark branches cross the orange sections, with leaves traced in gold.

The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

Kristen B. Leave a comment
Deep green mountains fade to brilliant yellow and orange to the top and bottom of the cover. Dark branches cross the orange sections, with leaves traced in gold.

by Kristen B.

A highly lyrical novel, The Mountains Sing talks about the price of war and who pays it. At one point, one of the characters muses that if only everyone could spend more time reading books, maybe we would spend less time fighting wars. It seems like a particularly timely sentiment.

Set in Vietnam, The Mountains Sing is told between a grandmother and her granddaughter, with one timeline taking place during the 1950s and the other in the 1970s. Both decades were particularly turbulent ones, covering the rise of the Viet Minh, the Land Reform movement, and the war between north and south that so fatefully embroiled America.

America has repeatedly told the story of its Vietnam War, particularly in films such as Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. Nguyen’s book provides another perspective, almost entirely. A noted author and poet in her homeland, this is her first novel in English. On her website, she explains that the second language allowed her to frame a story that she didn’t necessarily know how to tell in her native tongue.

Tran Dieu Lan was born to a well-to-do farming family that owned their land and employed several people in their hometown in the middle region of Vietnam. Politics eventually brought the downfall of the small landowners, forcing Dieu Lan to flee her home with five children in tow, grieving her oldest who escapes separately. She slowly, reluctantly leaves them in relative safety along the long walk north to Hanoi, promising to come back to find them once she’s settled.

Her granddaughter, Huong (or Guava), grows up in Hanoi and goes to school during the worst of the American bombing raids and after as the communist government establishes itself. The two women live together in the old city while all the members of the in-between generation are taken away by the war in one way or another. Huong’s own troubles and those of her extended family illustrate the trials of ordinary Vietnamese people during the turbulent times. She struggles to understand the adults in her life, and how the war changed them.

As the book progresses, Dieu Lan rediscovers her entire family as she originally pledged – both as children when they fled their village and later as the war ends. Grandma’s story is an agonizing portrayal of the hard choices women make to survive.

The title references a small native bird. Huong’s father carves a wooden version for her while he’s gone to war. The name of the bird translates to “the mountains sing” for its constant song, but its survival became endangered after Agent Orange was used on the upland regions. The symbolic heart of the book, the wooden carving comforts Huong and reminds us of the fragile nature of peace and the continued hope that, one day, the mountains will sing again.

The title is also available as an eBook and an audiobook on CD.

Kristen B. is a devoted bookworm lucky enough to work as the graphic designer for HCLS. She likes to read, stitch, dance, and watch baseball (but not all at the same time).