One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquéz, a Latin American master of magic realism.
The novel chronicles the story of the Buendía family, from José Arcadio Buendía and his wife, Ursula Iguáran, to Aureliano Babílonia and Amaranta Ursula.
Although One Hundred Years of Solitude undoubtedly has some great symbolic meaning behind its story, I enjoyed it on a superficial level - for its descriptive prose and the emotions of its characters. While the book detailed the tragic decline of the Buendía family, it somehow managed to keep an upbeat tone throughout the rather depressing events unfolded.
The isolated town of Macondo is a place where anything can happen, regardless of the rest of the universe. It is a place where gypsies pass through and peddle their magic, where it can rain for years on end, and the dead may walk and speak with the living. The tangled relationships of the Buendías, the repetition of names: Arcadio and Aureliano, and the long lives of many characters contribute to some confusion about people's identity. This is probably just another way to show that the Buendías have come full circle. This book was an enthralling chronicle of one town and the family that built it - Macondo and the Buendías.