The Sherman Theatre Book Group, Cardiff
The Sherman Theatre is a producing theatre company in Cardiff, Wales. Its Book Group was started in April 2003, as a neat excuse to talk about books and drink coffee. We started with Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’ and have just started ‘The Unicorn’ by Iris Murdoch.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Penguin)
Our book group really hit its stride with Marquez’ epic family saga of love, death and levitating children. The meeting kicked off with the unanimous verdict, “we loved it!” Thankfully, for the purposes of writing this report and avoiding a very dull meeting, it didn’t stop there. One Hundred Years of Solitude follows the fortunes of the Buendia family, founding residents of the South American jungle community of Macondo. During the century of the title they endure a breathtaking array of misfortune and misadventure, taking in war, revolution, inbreeding, alchemy, and... well, the list goes on and on, and this was one of the first strengths of the book to be discussed. The richness of incident and imagery and the skilful blending of the real and the surreal made for an extremely vivid and engaging read. Several group members likened the experience of talking about the book to waking from a dream and trying to recall the details – the sleeping sickness that gripped the village; Melquiades, the mysterious gypsy who holds the secrets to Macondo’s fate; a stranded Spanish galleon in the middle of the jungle; a baby being devoured by ants.
All of the characters were in someway flawed, and if not wholly likeable, each of them evoked our empathy in different ways. The multi-faceted Colonel Aureliano Buendia and his many spectacular survivals, the resourceful and resilient mother Ursula and her doomed husband Jose Arcadio, and the mysterious, troubled, earth-eating Rebeca remained with us long after the final page. The ending of the book was also praised, which, without giving too much away, drew us towards Macondo’s fate in a way which one reader summed up as “not wanting it to end, but desperately wanting to find out what happened.”
All of this made the book “much more than just a family saga.” However, this led to the group’s only criticism – Marquez’ stubborn desire to give several family members similar or identical names. Despite the invaluable family tree included at the outset, the story was at times hard to follow for several readers. Similarly, the often confusing rush of information meant that the book was best read in longer sittings and at least a chapter at a time (or, in the case of one lucky reader, while on holiday in France!)
The book’s status as a modern classic came under discussion. Marquez’ ranking in the Top 100 of the BBC’s Big Read campaign was the main reason for us discovering the book (and the generosity of Penguin, of course!). All agreed that it deserved its reputation, and could see from our own reading experiences the influence its ‘magic realism’ has had on writers like Isabel Allende and Louis DeBerniere. Some of us hadn’t been aware of the book beforehand; others had known of its reputation, and some had found the title off-putting. But all agreed that it had exceeded their expectations and that they’d left Marquez’ world with a sense of having discovered an original writer which many would return to in the future.
