“Innocent Erendira: And Other Stories” by Gabriel García Márquez, Book Review Example

In whole, this book is a collection of eleven short fiction stories and a novella, which represent young girl’s dreams of freedom, for she cannot escape the reach of her ferocious and rapacious grandmother. This book incorporates the moments of colorful and magical realism, especially in the moments of grandmother’s sleep-talking. In the middle of the collection I have notice the series of vaguely-connected shorts on the blur between the sleep and the concept of death. As I was reading through the book I noticed that most of the stories were difficult to follow, being fragmented and leaving you in the same place you began, abandoned in the garden of the absurd. They are also difficult to follow because of the brevity and surrealism they impose. At some points the writing in this book appears to be a bit dense, but it still easily drives the reader into the story. The richness of the language and the imaginativeness of author’s mind seem brilliant and haunting for me in particular. What I also find interesting, is the fecund and alternative ways he chooses for exploring the cycles of death and life, of pain and sadness, throughout his book. After reading the book, I truly hated the character of grandmother the way it was depicted, and I rooted for poor and doomed Eredina, being sorry for her. I loved the title story and another two stories – “The Sea of Lost Time” and “Eyes of a Blue Dog”, for they were relatively easy to follow and comprehend. All in all, even though I cannot say that this book is a masterpiece, it is good for the reader to see where the writer started and how his early works look like.