It's a long time since I read the book, but am I right in remembering that the firing squad doesn't kill him after all? What implications does that have for the opening sentence?

Also I think there's another "later, when he faced the firing squad" sentence a little further in, only this time it jars you by being inconsistent with the first one, because it's Jose Arcadio facing the firing squad this time, and you wonder if it's a typo. It isn't. There are two firing squads.
 

I had to read this book in college, and it drove me *absolutely nuts* because I couldn't quite figure out what was going on or who did what or why whoever was sleeping with the other person. I didn't realize until years later that this was intentional, that the author is well-known for writing things that are trippy and confusing and shake you loose from what you expect. If I'd known that going in, I would have felt less stupid that I didn't get it, and less annoyed at the author for writing stuff I didn't understand. It still isn't really the style of story I go for, but at least now I know a bit more of what he was up to.
 

Kit, have you read any Isabel Allende? The House of The Spirits is compared to One Hundred Years of Solitude quite a lot. It's one of my favorites.
 

@Sarah - I have, in fact, and I liked The House of the Spirits a great deal.
 

A ""One Hundred Years of Solitude"" reader will not be able to evaluate the whole work until at the end. So if one is thinking of skimming or skipping scenes, I suggest he/she should not. That is because Gabriel Garcia Marquez's writes his masterpieces like Chinese puzzle boxes with little sliding panels—the reader cannot open them until he/she has moved all those tiny components in exact sequence. Only then will the whole architecture of the novel become apparent. It's quite astonishing at first, but you'll get used to it.

""The House of The Spirits"" is indeed a great deal Kit. The man's obsession for power and the need to feel accepted by his wife make for an intriguing story to read.

In accordance with Sarah's comment: With a huge number of authors nowadays, some stories may bound to be similar, but I must say each writer has his/her own way with words and that what makes the novel unique.
 

The opening sentence in Spanish is:

"Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo."

Rhythmically, hm, nothing jumps out at me; it doesn't seem to be calling back to any poetic forms I'm familiar with. (Poetry in the Latin American Boom wasn't usually hung up on generalized rhythmic patterns anyway -- which isn't to say that rhythm didn't happen in individual poems, of course.)

What does jump out at me is "había de recordar," translated above as "was to remember." This feels to me (n.b.: Argentine dialectology, SO not my strong point; I could be wrong!) like a conscious archaism; the more modern locution would likely be "tenía que recordar." So, again, the time is out of joint, right down to the language.

Anything else in that? Well, maybe. The modern "tener que" plus infinitive is something like "to have to do something, to be forced [by powers beyond one's control] to do something." (E.g. "I gotta do my homework," no real choice in the matter.) "Haber de," historically, runs a gamut, from the above harsh necessity to a much less fraught "you just gotta [do this] [because it's awesome, understood]" to an entirely un-fraught temporally-focused "you'll do this [at some point in the future, or depending on tense, future perfect]."

So why, exactly, did this specific memory rise up as Aureliano Buendía faced the firing squad? García Marquez's verb usage seems to sedulously avoid answering...
 

I’m very interested in your first disclosure, as I have also recently been introduced to the works of Isabel Allende, and Paola Masino (1982; Birth and Death of a Housewife), via Massimo Bontempelli. I would very much like to learn which female magical realists you’ve enjoyed. Apologies if you’ve listed them previously.
 

This is perhaps one of the all time greatest novels in the history of literature ever written. Although I've heard many people disliking this book for its extreme complexity and mingling myths and fantasy with reality, still, this is 'the' book in literature that one must not miss during lifetime.

The language is poetic, and with the birth and death of a mythical town Macondo, this book describes the birth and death of eternal human values etched with the fragrance of sadness, happiness, solemnity, compassion, and tells the reader about all that are meaningful and meaningless in life.
 

Right! Two firing squads, of two binary characters! The rational and the hedonist, but only one actually dies!