Book Reviews - Review 217

A short novel describing the events surrounding the murder of one Santiago Nasar, falsely accused by Angela Vicario of taking her virginity before her marriage to Bayardo San Román. On learning of her impure past, San Román returns her, disgusted, to her family, and her twin brothers vow to avenge the shame brought upon her, by killing Nasar.

The story is told in an unconventional way, the movements of Nasar and the Vicario brothers in the hours before the murder being related several times, each time with different details provided. There are many chronological jumps backward and forward, the overall impression thus created of time as a tableau, the future no less inevitable than the past. This sense is reinforced by the fact that most of the town's population knows of the twins' intent, but for one reason or another, they all hold back from intervening.

Now, that description might make this book sound intriguing and profound, but I'm afraid it is neither. Somehow, García Márquez's artistic intentions seem to overshoot his inspiration. The main problem for me was the prose style: it is neutral and droning, in the same vein as (the similarly rather dull) News of a Kidnapping. Although there are the usual elements of mystery - references to the townsfolk's superstitions, and the subtle implication that Nasar's death was preordained - the writing totally lacks the poetic energy of One Hundred Years of Solitude. In places, it seems rushed, lacking rhythm and focus; meanwhile, some of the occasional attempts at poetic description are positively pretentious ("the rooms [...] were lighted by the embers of the eclipse").

I wouldn't say this is a terrible novel, but one doesn't get the feeling that it needed to be written. If it's your first encounter with García Márquez, you might well wonder how he ended up with a Nobel prize.