Last April, Gabriel García Márquez, the influential, Nobel Prize-winning author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera," died at the age of 87.
The Colombian is widely credited with helping to popularize magical realism, a genre in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, as the Nobel committee described it upon awarding him the prize for literature in 1982.
Isn't this why we read a book? To escape from our everyday lives, be they mundane or hectic, into another situation entirely?
As one of the most honored authors on earth, Gabo was born in the northern Colombian town of Aracataca, which became the inspiration for Macondo, the town at the center of Solitude, his novella Leaf Storm and the novel In Evil Hour.
The Colombian is widely credited with helping to popularize magical realism, a genre in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, as the Nobel committee described it upon awarding him the prize for literature in 1982.
Isn't this why we read a book? To escape from our everyday lives, be they mundane or hectic, into another situation entirely?
As one of the most honored authors on earth, Gabo was born in the northern Colombian town of Aracataca, which became the inspiration for Macondo, the town at the center of Solitude, his novella Leaf Storm and the novel In Evil Hour.
“The narrative is a magician's trick in which memory and prophecy, illusion and reality are mixed and often made to look the same. It is, in short, very much like Márquez's astonishing novel," wrote The New York Times in a 1970 review upon the release of the English translation by Gregory Rabassa. Read full CNN article here.
The human mind is capable of amazing jumps between logic and imagination. When reading a book, this capability is employed fully. Attribution for Quote.
I toy with the concept of magical realism in my own novels in the Moonstone series although they come under the genre of fantasy or paranormal. Hard to know why we have to label everything. I guess it's so we can judge if the book fits into our expectations.
What do you want from a novel? A certain genre? A story that inspires? Or just to be lifted out of your everyday life to experience something completely different?
The human mind is capable of amazing jumps between logic and imagination. When reading a book, this capability is employed fully. Attribution for Quote.
I toy with the concept of magical realism in my own novels in the Moonstone series although they come under the genre of fantasy or paranormal. Hard to know why we have to label everything. I guess it's so we can judge if the book fits into our expectations.
What do you want from a novel? A certain genre? A story that inspires? Or just to be lifted out of your everyday life to experience something completely different?
My sister's latest book is an example of this. While I read Losing Patients, the novel transported me to the place of my birth, Adelaide, Australia. I could see the clean ordered city, walk the arcades again, and smell the fresh air close to the sea, just as I had in my youth. I even got to become one of the characters—in name only because I didn't quite gel with my persona in the book. (Now I know how nervous Alana Mautone feels about being launched as a character in my forthcoming novel, Shattered Shells.) But I loved the story—the sharp wit of my sister Virginia Taylor, and the plot in Losing Patients. See my review at Francene--wordsticher.
Virginia's writing is so different from mine—just like our personalities, although we both redeem our characters at the end of the novel. Her witticism and attention to detail come through her words, whereas I'm simple and straight forward and looking for a deeper meaning in life. It's no use longing to be something you're not. I've long since accepted myself for who I am.
But back to novels. Have you read any of Gabriel García Márquez's books?
What sort of story-line do you like?
Virginia's writing is so different from mine—just like our personalities, although we both redeem our characters at the end of the novel. Her witticism and attention to detail come through her words, whereas I'm simple and straight forward and looking for a deeper meaning in life. It's no use longing to be something you're not. I've long since accepted myself for who I am.
But back to novels. Have you read any of Gabriel García Márquez's books?
What sort of story-line do you like?
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