Tag Archives: family

Week 12 – Papi

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I loved this book. The narration from a child’s perspective really made the story stand out, and had me hooked from the beginning. There’s just something about viewing the world from a child’s perspective that keeps you captivated with whatever story they have to tell. Thinking back to the other novels we have read, I would say the narration in this was far more believable. Children tend to be honest about what they see and experience, and while there were parts that were more fictitious, it wasn’t enough to make me second-guess the narration.

Moving on, I couldn’t help but think about the show Narcos, as I read the book. In the series (and in real life) Pablo Escobar was a notorious drug dealer, who committed other crimes (like murder) that no one but the people he sent to do the crime, knew about. In a way he was an enigma to his family, especially his daughter, just like Papi in the book. While we don’t learn or see much of his daughter throughout the series, I couldn’t help but picture her narrating this book. In the series she grows up with her father being absent most of the time, and doesn’t understand what kind of man he is. For example, when there’s a bombing at her house, that makes her lose hearing in one ear, she’s too young to realize it’s because of her father’s lifestyle that she gets injured. She kind of lives in this “bubble” that only exposes so much of her father. Anyways, I won’t go into further detail about this show but for those who haven’t seen it, I definitely recommend it.

Back to the book, there was something about the flow of the novel that made me feel slightly uneasy. At times it felt like we were getting somewhere with who Papi was, but then he would “disappear” and you began to feel lost again. It was kind of frustrating that his character was such an enigma, but it also added to the effect of what the narrator had to be feeling in the novel. I also couldn’t help but feel slightly unsettled by the way the narrator continued to love her father, despite the kind of man he was. He showed her his good and bad side, yet despite that she loved him. I guess this went to show just how much trauma she had from her father’s absence, and how she didn’t know how to deal with it. Overall, the book was an interesting read, and the elements of sadness and fantasy made it stand out.

Question to think about: Throughout the novel the narrator retells the story as a mix of make-belief and real events. Which got me wondering, do you think the “made-up” aspects of the story was a way for the narrator to deal with the trauma of having her father be an absent figure in her life? 

Week 7 – One Hundred Years of Solitude (Part 1)

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I really enjoyed this book, it was an interesting read. There were times when I did get a bit lost or confused, but the confusion tended to dissipate as I continued reading. I also did have a hard time remembering which character was which, and who they were connected to, because all of the characters seemed jumbled up to me but also interconnected in a way, kind of like a spider’s web. With that being said, I had a hard time writing a blog post for this book. The story was relatively straightforward and there wasn’t all that much going on, yet somehow I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say. After thinking about it for a long time, one big theme popped out to me in the novel and that was time and family.

All the characters in the novel are tied to their families history, which is unfortunately plagued with bad luck. It seems like no matter what they did, the characters would always be tethered to their family’s past, like there’s an invisible string (Taylor Swift reference) that cannot be broken and will force them to experience their own bad luck. This idea that everyone’s fates are predetermined adds an element of sadness for the reader, and it made me wish for some of the characters that the saying “family isn’t always blood”, was applicable in this story.

Furthermore, there was something captivating about reading a story where you knew the end of every characters story because despite that you kept hoping that someone would be able to escape the “curse”. There was also an added sense of realism because it showed that the past cannot always be escaped, which I think a lot of us can relate to. Anyways, with the idea of predetermined futures for the characters it made the story seem circular in a way. It seemed like a never ending cycle, where everyone was bounded to the same fate.

Also, a bit of a side-note but this book reminded me so much of the book East of Eden by John Steinbeck, maybe because I read it again recently. In that novel the characters tried to see if they could escape the evil in their family, similar to how the characters in this book were trying to escape their families history. For those of you who liked this book, or didn’t, I definitely recommend this book.

Question to think about: The idea that no one can escape their family’s past is a big theme throughout the novel. So, in your opinion why do you think Márquez created this world where every characters future is predetermined?