One Hundred Years of Solitude

I essentially read this book because it's on every list of Books One Should Read Before They Die, and it sounded far more interesting than many of the extremely old 'canon' pieces of yonder years that inevitably take up prominent spots on such lists.
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well, it was certainly not in the 18th Century style, but that didn't mean it wasn't a bit drawn out, halting and muddled.
To be honest I think the main issue was the characters were flippant within the story, passing in and out at random, unfixed in time on occasion, and confusing not only chronology, but relations and generations. This was not helped by the fact that every male in the novel of the Buendía family has (essentially) on of two names, either Aureliano or (Jose) Arcadio. it's a bit confusing. Granted, I see the significance of this odd narrative, and of the repeat of names, as history was seen to be circling back on itself, patterns in generations repeating and overlapping and confusing one another. In this way, the novel was brilliantly successful in mirroring life in narrative. However, it didn't make it particularly comprehensive, and I often found myself less engaged than I would have liked to be.

At it's core, 100 years of Solitude is a recounting of the history of one family- occasionally with meaningful, heartfelt stories, sometimes in minute detail, but often illuminating love and solitude, and the partnership that these feelings often share. The novel to me became the recounting of the latest 'ursula' or 'remedies' or 'aureliano' (yes many of the daughters were named after mothers or grandmothers as well), who they slept with - often wildly inappropriately, or out of sheer solitude, any resulting children, and a spiral into quiet sad solitude. This pattern, repeated again and again, had the markers of deep life lessons, but also became somewhat tedious for the reader.

in essence, I appreciated the novel, but I did not, in the end, find it overly engaging, moving or 'entertaining'. Rather it was dirty, real, unpolished poetry, which at times lagged, and at time showed glimpses of both the purity, and dark twisted animalisms that form the basis of humanity.

The House on Mango Street

A snapping, poingent look into one girls suffocating life and bumpy coming of age, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisnero is another example of her raw talent and unrelenting eye. An eighty-odd page 'novella' consisting of chapters ranging mostly within the length of 1-4 pages, Mango Street is less of a novel and more of a series of snippets and poems hitched together by the underlying current of supression, poverty and endurance.

Seen through the eyes of the young Latina girl Esperenza, the reader catches glimpses not only of Esperenza's life - desperate to escape the impoverished neighbourhood she seems forever confined to - but the lives of those around her, costantly observing. While the majority of the text focuses on Esperenza's day to day activities, the reader is also exposed to other ways of life on Mango Street alluded to by Esperenza's childish observations: the neighbour who's wife seems to look diffferent to everyone each time they see her; Lucy and Rachel the texan girls with whom Esperenza and her little sister Neeny form a close friendship; Sally who is embrassing womanhood at a speed far beyond Esperenza, despite their closeness in age. The other characters paint a picture of life on Mango street, and for esperenza, what seem to be some of the few options she might have to follow. However, despite hercircumstances, she is determined to bnreak free one way or another, and her first outlet becomes writing.

Esperenza often writes little poems or vignettes as a way to escape her surroundings and project a sense of future. Though it is never directly stated, by the end of the Novella we are led to believe that her ability to escape Mango, and yet always have a need to return, encompasses this act - though she may not remain physically in Mango Street, her heart will ever return there, as she writes the stories of those she new, helping them, too to escape.