Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Ratings120
Average rating3.9
This was a quick and enjoyable read! The writing is beautiful (as expected). It's also interesting to learn a bit about life in Colombia (or at least how Garcia Marquez portrays it); the fact that one of the main characters is Arab is not something I expected.
I'm honestly not sure what I just read. I'm used to fiction plots having twists, or making you wonder what's going to happen, or having a moral lesson. This – didn't really do any of those things. You're told what's going to happen in the first sentence of this novella. There's only one question, and it's never answered. I'm not really sure what the lesson is, if there is one. I'm just baffled at the entire thing.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Nobel prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is a novella about a man's death. A woman gets married, her bridegroom discovers she's not a virgin, returns her to her family, and her brothers kill the man who stole her virginity. That's really all there is to the story. The brothers are completely open about what they plan to do – the narrator thinks they didn't really want to carry out the murder and were hoping the townspeople would prevent them from doing so. The narrator is one of the townspeople, a friend of the victim, who is investigating the entire incident some twenty years later, trying to figure out why it happened and why exactly no one was able to prevent it.
Garcia Marquez writes well; his descriptions flow beautifully, his characters are interesting. Chronicle of a Death Foretold was not very linear, starting on the morning of the man's death and hopping between the events of that day and twenty years later. I don't mind slightly non-linear books, but this one annoyed me a bit. (Strangely, I loved The Time-Traveler's Wife, which is not linear in the least.)
I'll be reading another Garcia Marquez book soon – Love in the Time of Cholera – and plan to watch the movie, too, before I review it here. So I'll give him another shot. But Chronicle of a Death Foretold just...confuses me.
This was a quick and enjoyable read! The writing is beautiful (as expected). It's also interesting to learn a bit about life in Colombia (or at least how Garcia Marquez portrays it); the fact that one of the main characters is Arab is not something I expected.
Nice perspectivist story with some religious and character subtext that adds unique layers to the story. A new favorite of mine. 9/10.
Una buena historia que practica el perspectivismo, con detalles de transfondo con conotación religiosa y personajes con psicología tridimensional. Márquez creó una nueva obra favorita mía 9/10.
The rating is kind of small but I would still recommend reading this book, especially if you're a writer. You can probably learn a thing or two about foreshadowing and working with the reader's expectations.
9.0
A maneira com a qual Marquez constr??i o universo de maneira paulatina, com descri????es acuradas e realistas para contextualizar o leitor da ordem de eventos e pontos de vista, e a maneira com a qual ele usa essa constru????o contra o leitor na segunda metade do livro, com a reconstru????o do assassinato e dos eventos ap??s o mesmo ?? de uma maestria inigual??vel. Eu segurei minha respira????o pelas ??ltimas dez p??ginas, praticamente.
Minha primeira leitura em espanhol, espero que primeira de muitas.
Interesting and strange story. So strange, in fact, I'm not sure what to really think or say. I did like it enough to want to read something of greater length from Márquez, so maybe 100 Years of Solitude is up next.
Una tragedia hermosa. García Márquez nos lleva paso a paso por una cadena de malos entendidos, cada cual es tragedia en sí misma: el bárbaro prejuicio sobre la virginidad, el ideal de venganza, la ignorancia, falta de comunicación, y mero accidente.
El genio de García Márquez—aparte de su maestría del idioma, por supuesto—es que relata sin juzgar. Los eventos trascurren, los personajes no son ni buenos ni malos sino simplemente caracteres humanos atrapados en sus circunstancias. Sus acciones no son de ellos mismos, sino que están dictadas por el ambiente en que se han formado. Y asi narrando, el autor nos guia a reflejar sobre nosotros mismos, nuestra cultura e influencias que nos forman. ¿Como podemos sobrepasar nuestro ambiente y superarnos como seres humanos concientes y despiertos?
Simplemente genial, un libro atrapante que no vas a querer soltar hasta llegar a su conclusión. Muy recomendado para una persona que busca una lectura corta pero de gran calidad, ideal para leer con amigos ya que se presta a divertidos debates de opiniones y teorías.
