Strange Pilgrims, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (4.0)
This translated title of the book turns out to be quite
accurate (it is alternatively known as ‘12 Pilgrims’)– each of the twelve
stories held in this book contain strange characters or strange happenings to
ordinary characters and they all are pilgrims of sorts as we find them outside
of their birth countries. While many of the short stories dwell on death, they
are more uplifting in spirit than you would expect, such as the woman who suspects
she is dying so she teaches her dog to cry upon her grave. Marquez looks at
young and old with a similar lens to describe the magical events in their life
as they travel amongst foreigners. The most disturbing happens to also be my
favorite: ‘I Only Came to Use the Phone’ is the story of a young wife whose car
breaks down. She hitches a ride with a bus full of women and mistakenly gets
put in an insane asylum. As with other Marquez works, you often need to suspend
reality and just enjoy where the colorful prose takes you.
No comments:
Post a Comment