I'd heard all the hype about this "literary great" and this magical / ethereal story and was intrigued. I'd never read any Gabriel Garcia Marquez before so I had no real idea what to expect but my expectations were high as people seem to rate it so highly and talk about how clever it is.

What I got was a very strange story about the entire history of a family living in an odd "magical" version of the world where bizarre things happen such as autistic girl flying away to heaven, or incestuous relationships between an aunt and child, or people seeing ghosts, or incestuous relationships between siblings, or brutal masacres that never happened or rains storms lasting years. And many visits to brothels in between.

At the end of the book I was left with the feeling that while I enjoyed the unusual ride, I had no idea what the hell the point of the whole thing was. Since finishing it I've read up a little on what the book is about (it's apparently partially a parable about the great failings of the Columbian nation) and I've realized that I'm not really supposed to fully get this book. I feel much of the meaning behind this story has literally been 'lost in translation'; to truly completely appreciate this book you probably need to share Marquez's cultural history (including the numerous oblique references to real life events made by parallel events that occur in the story).

However despite perhaps not fully understanding the message Marquez wanted to send with this work, I can still appreciate it for what it is. It's a beautifully written if frequently rather odd fable. It's cleverly written, drawing the reader in to make you care about the many characters who flit in and then out of the story. At times it's funny and at times it's very sad. But in English, for me at least, it's an oddity - a good read but not really a truly great one because too much of it's meaning has been lost by the translation into another culture and possibly the passage of time. It's well worth reading, but I wouldn't expect the book to live up to some of the hype.