[personal profile] quippe
The Blurb On The Back:

Admired by millions across the world, Gabriel Garcia Márquez first came to prominence as an imaginative writer of genius with his fantastical novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, published by Penguin in 1972. Alternately enchanting and disconcerting, the four tales in this volume describe the frailty of humanity and the bewitching force of the imagination, in a world where the lines between reality and dream and hopelessly blurred.



Released by Penguin as part of a ‘taster’ book series given away with The Times and Starbucks in 2007, this is a collection of four short stories by Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Having not read any of Márquez’s work before, I found it a mixed bag.

SEVENTEEN POISONED ENGLISHMAN left me completely cold. Prudencia Linero’s travels from the Caribbean to Italy to obtain personal absolution from the pope for an unknown sin and is forced to spend the night in a Naples hotel with its variety of inhabitants, including 17 Englishmen with matching pale knees. The story goes nowhere. There’s no resolution, you never find out much about Linero I was left wondering what the point was. No doubt it went over my head, but I didn’t find it interesting or challenging and I certainly didn’t connect with it.

‘I ONLY CAME TO USE THE PHONE’ was a much more successful story, following a young woman called Maria whose car breaks down in a rainstorm and who accepts a lift from a bus driver whose transporting a load of women. It’s only when they reach their destination and Maria asks to use a phone that she discovers the women are all mental patients and the place a sanatorium where she’s forcibly detained. It’s a strange, powerful, chilling story made the more so as Márquez explains why Maria’s husband doesn’t look for her at first. Out of the collection, this was the one that lingered with me for longest.

THE WOMAN WHO CAME AT SIX O’CLOCK was also an interesting story. It’s deceptively simple – a woman who works as a prostitute comes to Jose’s bar every day at 6 o’clock for conversation and a steak dinner. This evening though the conversation is strained, the woman waspish, her comments barbed and this time she insists that she arrived at 5.30pm. It slowly becomes apparent to both Jose and the reader that something more is going on and working out that is a delight from beginning to end.

LIGHT IS LIKE WATER is a story about children who are told that light is like water and ask for boats and diving equipment for their games in response for good school work. Their play is rewarded when light takes on the quality of water to give their games realism. It’s a charming read but ultimately a frothy one.

The Verdict:

The collection’s worth checking out for the two stories ‘I ONLY CAME TO USE THE PHONE’ and THE WOMAN WHO CAME AT SIX O’CLOCK and I’m curious enough to want to read more of Márquez’s work.

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