Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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20th century fiction, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Group Choice, I sell my dreams, Latin American fiction, Magical Realism, short stories, why join a book group

Reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez is an acquired taste. This is my second attempt to acquire it (we did “Love in the Time of Cholera” a couple of years back). But as I believe the whole point of reading groups is that you read outside your comfort zone and persevere when you’re tempted to give up, I hope I have given this collection of short stories my best shot at appreciating a different genre.

The Prologue is interesting and instructive – the author makes it clear that these 12 published stories are the fruits of polishing and reworking 64 original story ideas. All the stories are of the South American diaspora in Europe and there are several recurrent themes – visiting Rome with a desire to see the Pope, (The Saint and Seventeen Poisoned Englishmen) being stranded in a strange place (I only came to use the phone and Seventeen Poisoned Englishmen) and rootless nomadic characters feature in most.

At first the characters seem fey and contrived – particularly in “Bon Voyage Mr President” and “The Saint”. Things take a turn for the better with “Sleeping Beauty and the Airplane” – a heart-stoppingly beautiful airline passenger causes considerable perturbation in a fellow traveller – the last 6 lines of the story are particularly good.

This is followed by “I sell my dreams” which after a slow start and despite the fact that the author piggy backs shamelessly on Pablo Neruda’s celebrity, is a quirky successful short story. Wrapped round the theme of “Soothsayer meets unforeseen accident” with references to a professionally incestuous group of writers trying to impress each other, I started to get the hang of the writer darting in and out of a couple of story lines.

But the next story “I only came to use the phone” put me on the back foot again. My notes say “a tale of unrelieved awfulness.” It might just reflect my aversion to the dystopic but I did feel the plot stretched the bounds of credibility.

Then to my favourite in the whole book. “The Ghosts of August” a well-constructed  ghost story, told in the first person. No messing around here, it’s short and to the point. None of the rambling exposition of some of the earlier stories.

So I’ll quit on a high – for me this is a very mixed bag and if someone could let me in on the secret of Magical Realism I’d be very pleased. Don’t hold back, let me have any clues that might help me buy into this genre.
Comments Please …..!

Update 28 April 2017 The Book Group has revisited Strange Pilgrims see new blog post here.

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The lure of the eReader

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e-books, Kindle, reading experience

(I’ve deliberately avoided using the name of the market leader which is fast becoming a noun in the same league as Hoover)

When I was given an eReader two Christmases ago I thought that I’d use it primarily for holiday reading.  At that point I only downloaded books for the Reading Group as a last resort as I love the feel of real books.

But over the last year or so my reading habits have definitely changed.  When we decide a new reading list I check whether the book is available electronically and if it is I hold off getting it till the week before we’re due to read it as I like it fresh in my mind for discussion.

I’ve also gradually adopted bits of the technology that I originally thought were pointless.  For example there are 4 different colours to highlight important passages.  I thought that was all a bit OTT but now find it very useful to differentiate a pivotal moment from a particularly well-written passage. (I’ve also introduced pink for the cheese factor!)  As I never sit down and read a book straight off it’s good to be able to easily refresh my memory on significant passages before I continue reading.  The ability to check where characters previously appeared (hat tip Louise) is also very useful especially in a book like Life after Life.

So while I would never want to abandon reading from real books, and we have to use real books  with forgotten gems like the upcoming Elizabeth Jenkins’ work The Tortoise and the Hare, it is interesting to take a more techie approach and widen the reading experience.  Please add your thoughts on the debate.