April 2005    

Living to Tell the Tale Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Edith Grossman, (Translator) Publisher: Knopf $26.95 Cloth (483 P.) ISBN: 1400041341 B&T         YBP Reviewed by JoAnn Meyers, Customer Service Bibliographer I was first introduced to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, when my eldest son gave me a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera as a gift many years ago. First, I must confess to being a hopeless romantic, and so it follows that I was enraptured with the story but most of all, his mastery of stating a simple fact and telling in glorious prose how things got to be the way they are. I was "hooked" after reading the now famous first sentence, "It was inevitable: The scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love". Since that time, I have been a devoted fan and have read all of his novels. Until the publication of this memoir, I believed One Hundred Years of Solitude would forever be Marquez's greatest achievement. I count myself among the legion of critics and readers who extol Gabriel Garcia Marquez as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Still I was, once again, amazed and beguiled by his latest work. Living to Tell the Tale is, according to the author, the first in a trilogy, his story of a young man who will, as he announces to himself and his family: "……. be a writer..…nothing but a writer", and indeed he is. If nothing else, Living to Tell the Tale is an example of magnificent writing. The fabulous characters, descriptions, and fascinating encounters with various women in his life, as well as the portraits he draws of family members, especially his grandparents with whom he lived for many years as a young child, all contribute to the tale of a man who recounts the events of his formative years with the art of the consummate storyteller. He sets the scene with incidents before his birth, his parent's courtship, and the birth of siblings and the early years in Aracataca, a small very poor village on the Caribbean coast where a horrific incident occurs in 1928 when 3,000 striking banana workers are shot and killed by government troops. Although just a baby at the time, this story, told to him by his grandmother was to have a profound effect on him in later years. This is not a conventional memoir. One has to be reminded it is a work of non-fiction, so powerful and breathtaking is the imagery Marquez draws as he magically describes his journey into manhood. You travel with him, never wanting the journey to end. Edith Grossman has translated this work (as in other Marquez novels,) with the art and skill of a poet. Run, do not walk to the nearest book store and prepare yourself for a "tale" like no other. Published by YBP Library Services 999 Maple St., Contoocook, NH 03229 USA v: 800.258.3774   f: 603.746.5628 w: www.ybp.com   e: academia@ybp.com All rights reserved.