Books: Orchids and Bloodlines

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Indeed, the whole enchanted continent, originally colonized by white men in pursuit of El Dorado and the Fountain of Youth, is encapsulated in Macondo. The only trace of the Protestant ethic in the town is the operation of the U.S banana company—and the "gringos" are plainly mean, greedy, and probably crazy too. The Buendias, on the other hand, are inspired mainly by the magic in life. They see no limit of human potential, mostly because natural miracles abound—a plague of insomnia, showers of dead birds or yellow flowers, the arrival of death as a lady in blue. When Remedies Buendia (whose beauty and musky odor drive men mad) suddenly ascends to heaven while folding sheets, her sister-in-law merely grumbles that the sheets, which also rose, are lost forever.

For all its range and length, the book is satisfyingly cohesive where it might be sprawling. The key to this unity is Garcia Márquez's treatment of time. Consider the superb opening sentence: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Such compression of time makes the novel taut with a sense of fate. Atavistic dictates of blood must be followed. Premonitions invariably come true. A series of coded predictions, written when Macondo was still young, are deciphered only when every prediction has been fulfilled, including the final, devastating wind that takes apart Macondo. The future is thus history, the end is the beginning, and the reader is tempted to start again.