Of Garcia Marquez and bedtime stories

The first time I started a Garcia Marquez novel, i put it down after almost a page.

I picked it up again after almost a year because I had nothing to do. I persisted with the book and ended up loving it. 

I have read two of his books after that. In fact, I am reading his third book. 

Garcia Marquez is someone who grows on you. 

He is someone you can take to bed. His books i mean. And when you wake up in the morning, you can continue from when you left off. His style is lyrical, his prose encompassing. He has the uncanny ability of twisting and turning the plots at unexpected times. Once, while reading 'Love in the time of Cholera', and reared in the normal school of thoughts, I thought of a character as a protagonist until he died in the first five pages. The next character I took to as the protagonist died within the next one hundred pages or so! (Am I that unlucky for the characters?)

The stories have a humane character to them. They skip generations in a few pages and return to them in a few lines. 

I can see Simon Bolivar and his last days in front of my eyes. Also his callused buttocks. I can see Dr Juvenal Urbino. I can feel the love in the time of cholera. I can see Macondo being established before my eyes, the intricacies of the various characters of the Buendia family. I can see Colonel Aureliano Buendia sitting in his chair looking out at the dusk with little gold fishes in his hand.

I can go to bed a hundred nights with a Garcia Marquez in my hands.