One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez | Book Review

(This book review will be in English and Indonesian, so it's longer than usual. Review buku ini dalam bahasa Inggris dan bahasa Indonesia, sehingga lebih panjang dari biasanya.)

“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”

Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is the OG multigenerational family drama except with more ghosts, alchemy, and apocalyptic rainstorms. Macondo is a place where love stories crash and burn, history gets rewritten like a bad Wikipedia edit, and the past keeps sliding into everyone’s DMs like an ex who won’t let go. Written in 1967, this book somehow predicted our modern chaos like the performative relationships, the corporate gaslighting, and the way we all doomscroll past the same disasters on loop. Whether you’re drowning in group chats or just tired of watching history repeat itself, Márquez’s masterpiece hits with one brutal truth: Congrats, you’re a Buendía.

(One Hundred Years of Solitude oleh Gabriel García Márquez tuh kayak the original drama keluarga multigenerasi, tapi dibumbui hantu, alkimia, dan hujan apokaliptik. Macondo adalah tempat dengan kisah cinta berantakan kayak hubungan toxic, sejarah diubah-ubah kayak Wikipedia editan bocah, dan masa lalu nongol terus kayak mantan yang nggak move on. Ditulis tahun 1967, buku ini somehow udah prediksi kekacauan zaman kita: Relationship buat pajangan, perusahaan yang suka gaslight, dan ebiasaan kita scroll berita bencana yang itu-itu terus. Entah kamu kecanduan grup chat atau capek lihat sejarah terus berulang, pesan Márquez sudah jelas: Selamat, kamu adalah Buendía!)

👉 Find out here: Which Buendía are You? 

BOOK INFORMATION

Title                       : One Hundred Years of Solitude - Seratus Tahun Kesunyian

Author                  : Gabriel García Márquez

Translator            : Djokolelono

Publisher             : Gramedia Pustaka Utama

Language             : Indonesian

Length                  : 483 pages

Published            : 1967 (original); September 10, 2018 (translated version)

Read                      : December 9-31, 2022 (re-read)

GR Rating            : 4.11

My Rating            : 5.00

Where to buy      : griya buku pelangi, or dojobuku (Indonesian edition) 

TL;DR: A century-long family drama where magic feels basic, history keeps repeating like a bad TikTok trend, and everyone's emotionally unavailable. 

SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE:

⚠️ Existential vertigo when you realize your family has Buendía-level drama

⚠️ Sudden urges to fact-check your childhood memories

⚠️ Inability to unsee how your situationships mirror Remedios' toxic love life

⚠️ Paranoia that your town might also be doomed (climate change who?)

⚠️ Uncontemporary highlight addiction (every page has quotable bars)

READ WITH:

A family tree diagram

Emotional support water bottle

Willingness to accept that history isn't repeating, we're just stuck in Macondo

THIS EDITION'S BLURB

"Bertahun-tahun kemudian, saat menghadapi regu tembak yang akan mengeksekusinya, Kolonel Aureliano Buendía jadi teringat suatu sore, dulu sekali, ketika diajak ayahnya melihat es. Riuh rendah pipa dan drum panci yang berisik mengiringi kedatangan rombongan Gipsi ke Macondo, desa yang baru didirikan, tempat José Arcadio Buendía dan istrinya yang keras kepala, Úrsula, memulai hidup baru mereka. Ketika Melquíades yang misterius memukau Aureliano Buendía dan ayahnya dengan penemuan-penemuan baru dan kisah-kisah petualangan, mereka tak tahu-menahu arti penting manuskrip yang diberikan lelaki Gipsi tua itu kepada mereka. Kenangan tentang manuskrip itu tersisihkan oleh wabah insomnia, perang saudara, pembalasan dendam, dan hal-hal lain yang menimpa keluarga Buendía turun temurun. Hanya segelintir yang ingat tentang manuskrip itu, dan hanya satu orang yang akan menemukan pesan tersembunyi di dalamnya. One Hundred Years of Solitude atau Seratus Tahun Kesunyian merupakan sebuah judul dari novel yang ditulis oleh Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Perang yang tak berkesudahan, bencana, kolonialisme, kediktatoran dan kekerasan politik merupakan bagian dari sejarah Amerika Latin yang terekam dalam novel Seratus Tahun Kesunyian ini. Buku ini dianggap memiliki dampak politik yang besar bagi Kolombia dan Amerika Latin karena membantu menciptakan identitas Amerika Latin. Buku ini sangat bagus dan menarik, cocok bagi para penikmat novel yang menggemari tentang sejarah."

“because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth”

BOOK REVIEW

Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is like a time-loop nightmare you can't wake up from except it's so beautifully written, you don't want to. The Buendía family's century-long curse of repeated mistakes, failed revolutions, and doomed love affairs is a mirror to our own world. Wars that recur like clockwork, politicians recycle empty promises, and families pass down the same toxic patterns like heirlooms. Márquez forces us to stare at the glitch in humanity's code: we keep walking into the same walls, then act shocked when we're bleeding.

The Buendías keep repeating the same disasters like they're stuck in a time loop, and they are basically all of us asking "why do I keep making the same mistakes?" over and over again. Márquez shows how generational trauma works like a cursed family group chat: the same toxic patterns keep getting forwarded, even when everyone knows how this story ends. His magical realism is the literary equivalent of that moment when deja vu hits so hard you question reality. One second characters are haunted by literal ghosts, the next they’re repeating their ancestors’ mistakes with tragic precision. Turns out history isn't some distant thing, it's the drama we can't stop reenacting in our own lives.

As for the loneliness? Brutal. The Buendías could throw a family reunion with 50 people and still each feel like the last person on earth. Aureliano's wars, Amaranta's bitterness, José Arcadio's silent despair, they're all variations on the same theme: connection is hard when everyone's stuck in their own head. Sound familiar? In an age where you can have 1,000 followers and zero real conversations, Macondo's emotional quarantine feels less like fiction and more like a mood. Márquez knew isolation was more than being alone, but being misunderstood in a crowd.

The Buendías’ story takes a sharp turn with the arrival of the banana company. It turns this place into a company-run dystopia where labor is cheap and dissent gets disappeared. The massacre of striking workers (later erased from official history) feels like real-world struggles against unchecked capitalism, from sweatshops to gig economy exploitation. This book's genius lies in showing how power corrupts not just individuals but entire systems, and leaving us to wonder: How much has really changed since Macondo’s era of disposable workers and rewritten histories?

Environmental decay creeps in alongside human suffering, as the banana company’s operations choke Macondo’s once-lush landscape. It slowly morphs into a wasteland of yellow flowers and choked rivers with heavy air, which is the 1960s version of climate collapse. The banana company sucks the land dry like a bad landlord, then bails when the profits stop flowing. Sound familiar? Macondo's eco-apocalypse reads like a prequel to our current overwhelming numbers of wildfires and oil spills. It forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth about societies that prioritize profit over sustainability don’t just decline, they vanish, leaving only whispers behind.

The most unsettling part of this book is its treatment of memory, that feels different in our era of deepfakes and selective amnesia. When Macondo collectively forgets the banana company massacre, it's a tragic blueprint for how power operates today. History gets edited faster than a TikTok draft, truths get buried under flowery written fiction, and Márquez predicted it decades before algorithms decided what we "need to know." These characters are both forgetful and addicted to denial, like scrolling past bad news to watch cat videos instead. Fernanda’s delusions and José Arcadio’s obsessions aren't so different from our own mental gymnastics when reality gets too uncomfortable, both are prisons dressed up as safe spaces. The scary truth? Forgetting isn't something that just happens to us, it's something we choose, one convenient lie at a time.

Even love, that universal salvation, becomes another prison in Macondo. The Buendías’ romances are feverish, obsessive, and almost always destructive, everyone gets hurt, nobody wins. Amaranta's bitterness, Rebeca's obsessive flings, Fernanda's cold marital performance, they're all proof that romance without trust is just fancy loneliness. In an era of dating apps and Instagram-perfect relationships, where intimacy is often performative and emotional walls run high, this novel cuts deep. Somehow these 19th-century disasters invented toxic relationships before therapy existed. It's making you side-eye your own love life while reading, and wondering how love becomes just another form of solitude as isolating as the grandest mansion in Macondo.

Yet for all its tragedy, this book’s final moments offer a strange kind of hope. As Macondo dissolves into nothingness, its history, its people, even its ruins erased, we’re left with the quiet realization that impermanence is the only constant. But there’s freedom in that. If even a century of drama can vanish overnight, maybe our own bad patterns aren't so permanent. If cities can vanish, then new ones might rise differently. Then quietly Márquez drops this question into our laps: Will we cling to illusions like the Buendías, or dare to rewrite our stories before the wind carries them away? Heavy? Sure. But somehow it's weirdly comforting.

(One Hundred Years of Solitude oleh Gabriel García Márquez berasa kayak mimpi buruk di time-loop jadi kita nggak bisa bangun, tapi ditulis dengan indahnya sampai kamu malah betah. Keluarga Buendía yang dikutuk selama seabad dengan kesalahan berulang, revolusi yang gagal, dan percintaan yang berakhir tragis itu cerminan dunia kita sendiri. Perang yang muncul lagi, politisi yang pakai janji-janji kosong, dan pola toxic keluarga yang diwariskan turun-temurun kayak harta karun. Márquez bikin kita sadar kalau manusia tuh sukanya menabrak tembok yang sama, terus heran kenapa mereka bisa berdarah-darah.

Keluarga Buendía kayak kita semua yang terus nanya, "Kenapa sih aku mengulang kesalahan yang sama?" Márquez nunjukin gimana trauma generasional tuh kayak grup WA keluarga yang cursed, pola toxicnya terus-menerus di-forward, padahal semua udah tau endingnya bakal gimana. Magical realisme di buku ini tuh kayak pas kita ngerasain deja vu sampe bingung mana yang nyata. Satu detik karakternya diganggu hantu, detik berikutnya mereka mengulang kesalahan nenek moyangnya dengan sama persis. Ternyata sejarah tuh bukan cuma pelajaran sekolah, tapi drama yang kita ulang-ulang sendiri dalam hidup.

Soal kesepian? Nyesek banget. Keluarga Buendía bisa ngadain reuni buat 50 orang tapi tetep aja masing-masing merasa kayak orang terakhir di bumi. Perangnya Aureliano, kekesalan Amaranta, keputusasaan José Arcadio, itu semua variasi dari tema yang sama: susah banget berhubungan dengan orang lain kalau semua orang sibuk dengan pikirannya sendiri. Kedengeran familiar? Di zaman dimana kita bisa punya 1.000 follower tapi nggak ada percakapan real, isolasi emosional Macondo tuh bukan fiksi lagi, tapi mood banget. Márquez paham banget kesepian itu bukan cuma soal sendirian, tapi tentang nggak dimengerti di tengah keramaian.

Cerita Keluarga Buendía makin intens saat perusahaan pisang datang. Macondo berubah jadi dystopia korporat: buruh diperas, yang protes dihilangkan. Pembantaian buruh mogok (yang kemudian dihapus dari sejarah) tuh mirip banget sama perlawanan terhadap kapitalisme modern, dari sweatshop sampai eksploitasi pekerja lepas. Buku ini jenius karena nunjukin gimana kekuasaan nggak cuma merusak individu, tapi seluruh sistem, dan bikin kita mikir: "Emangnya bedanya apa sama sekarang?"

Perusahaan pisang pelan-pelan mencekik Macondo yang dulunya hijau subur, berubah jadi tanah gersang penuh bunga kuning dan sungai mati. Udara jadi berat kayak di kota industri, ini versi tahun 60-an dari krisis iklim kita sekarang. Perusahaan ini menyedot habis sumber daya kayak landlord jahat, terus kabur pas keuntungannya udah habis. Kedengeran familiar kan? Kehancuran ekologi Macondo berasa kayak prekuel dari berita kebakaran hutan dan tumpahan minyak yang kita lihat tiap hari. Márquez bikin kita melihat fakta nggak enak dari masyarakat yang memilih uang daripada kelestarian alam, mereka nggak cuma mengalami kemunduran, tapi bakal punah tanpa bekas.

Bagian paling ngeri adalah gimana buku ini membahas soal ingatan yang relevan banget di zaman deepfake dan amnesia kolektif kita. Pas warga Macondo pada lupa soal pembantaian buruh, itu kayak blueprint cara kekuasaan bekerja jaman now. Sejarah di-edit lebih cepet dari draft TikTok, kebenaran dikubur dibawah narasi indah. Márquez sudah memprediksi ini puluhan tahun sebelum algoritma mengatur apa yang kita "perlu tau". Karakter-karakternya denial abis, kayak kita yang lebih memilih menonton video kucing daripada membaca berita buruk. Delusi Fernanda dan obsesi José Arcadio adakah cerminan mental gymnastics kita sendiri pas realita terlalu nggak nyaman, yaitu penjara yang dibungkus kayak safe space. Kebenarannya? Lupa itu bukan sesuatu yang terjadi ke kita, tapi pilihan yang kita ambil, kebohongan demi kebohongan.

Di Macondo, cinta yang mestinya menyelamatkan malah jadi penjara baru. Hubungan romantis keluarga Buendía tuh meresahkan, obsesif, dan hampir selalu berakhir tragis. Amaranta yang pahit, Rebeca yang posesif, pernikahan dingin Fernanda, semua bukti bahwa cinta tanpa kepercayaan cuma kesepian yang fancy. Di era dating apps dan hubungan Instagrammable, dimana keintiman cuma performa dan tembok emosi makin tinggi, novel ini menusuk banget. Gila aja sih orang-orang abad 19 ini udah nemuin toxic relationship sebelum ada terapi. Bacanya sambil side eyeing kisah cinta masing-masing. Cinta di sini cuma jadi bentuk lain dari kesepian yang sama mengasingkannya dengan rumah megah di Macondo.

Tapi di balik semua tragedi, ending buku ini masih sempat memberikan secercah harapan. Pas Macondo lenyap tanpa bekas, sejarah, orang-orang, bahkan reruntuhannya ikut hilang, kita disadarkan satu hal: yang abadi cuma ketidakkekalan. Justru di situ ada kebebasan. Kalau satu abad drama bisa ilang semalam, berarti pola buruk kita juga bisa berubah kan? Kalau kota bisa hilang, berarti yang baru bisa dibangun lebih baik. Márquez kayak berbisik ke kita: Mau terus bertahan dalam ilusi kayak Buendía, atau berani menulis ulang cerita sendiri sebelum angin membawanya pergi? Depresif? Iya. Tapi anehnya somehow menghibur.)

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mother gives birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

THINGS I LOVE

■ Magical realism that's just regular tuesday. In Macondo, miracles are as mundane as checking your phone. People float after breakfast, women vanish into the sky mid-chores, and four-year rainstorms barely rate a conversation. Márquez's genius? Making the absurd feel as normal as your weird family group chat. When reality's this elastic, you start questioning whether that strange DM you got last week might've actually been a prophecy.

■ Your family group chat, but epic. Sure, the Buendías deal with revolutions and curses, but strip away the magic and it's just another messy family tree. Their toxic relationships, stubborn grudges, and "why do we keep doing this?" moments will have you side-eyeing your own relatives. Márquez proves every family's drama hits the same whether you're in 1800s Colombia or watching yours unfold over Lebaran gathering.

■ Sentences that hit like late-night texts from your ex. Márquez writes tragedy so beautifully it hurts. A dying man's last breath gets the same poetic treatment as a sunset, and makes you ache while marveling at the words. His prose that describes things can cast its own spells to you. You'll find yourself rereading passages just to feel that punch to the gut again.

■ History's worst playlist on repeat. Macondo's residents keep making the same bad choices like they're stuck in a terrible TikTok trend. Failed revolutions? Check. Doomed romances? Obviously. Collective amnesia about past traumas? Unfortunately relatable. This novel's cyclical structure is a mirror to our own stubborn patterns. We might have better tech, but we're still falling for the same nonsense.

■  Characters you love to judge (then recognize). The Buendías are that messy friend you can't look away from. José Arcadio's ego, Amaranta's pettiness, Remedios' lethal beauty, they're all gloriously flawed disasters. What makes them unforgettable isn't their magic, but how painfully human they are. You'll cringe seeing bits of yourself in their worst moments.

■ Time as your drunk storyteller uncle. Forget straight timelines, this story loops, spirals, and doubles back on itself like someone telling a rambling anecdote. Generations blur, events repeat, and déjà vu becomes a lifestyle. It's confusing, hypnotic, and weirdly accurate to how memory actually works when you're trying to explain family drama.

■ Alone together since 1967. The Buendías invented lonely-in-a-crowd before it was a hashtag. Their emotional isolation hits different when you're reading it between scrolling through social media. Márquez understood what we're all realizing now: you can be constantly connected but still feel like you're shouting into the void.

■ An ending that ghosts everyone. Macondo doesn't get a dramatic finale, but it gets quietly deleted from existence. No monuments, no lessons learned, just gone. It's terrifying and freeing at once. If even a century of drama can vanish, maybe your embarrassing phase will too. The book's last gift? Permission to let go of what doesn't serve you.

(■ Realisme magis yang kerasa normal. Di Macondo, keajaiban tuh biasa kayak cek HP. Orang bisa melayang sehabis sarapan, cewek lenyap ke langit pas jemur baju, hujan 4 tahun pun nggak bikin heboh. Kejeniusan Márquez? Bikin yang absurd terasa normal kayak grup WA keluarga kamu yang super aneh itu. Realitanya sampai se-fleksibel ini, kamu jadi mikir: jangan-jangan DM aneh kemaren itu beneran ramalan?

■ Grup WA keluarga, tapi epik. Ya, keluarga Buendía menghadapi revolusi dan kutukan, tapi tanpa semua keajaiban itu intinya adalah keluarga broken home. Hubungan toxic, dendam turun-temurun, dan pertanyaan "kenapa sih kita selalu begini?" bakal bikin kita melirik keluarga sendiri. Márquez membuktikan drama keluarga itu sama aja, entah di Kolombia era 1800an atau pas kumpul Lebaran.

■ Kalimat-kalimat yang ngena kayak chat mantan jam 2 pagi. Márquez nulis tragedi dengan indahnya sampai kerasa perih. Nafas terakhir orang sekarat dijelasin sebagus sunset, bikin kita terpana sambil merasakan pedihnya. Tulisannya bisa menyihir kita. Kita bakal bolak-balik baca paragraf tertentu cuma buat ngerasain tusukan di hati itu lagi.

■  Playlist sejarah terburuk on repeat. Warga Macondo terus mengulang kesalahan kayak terjebak tren TikTok gagal. Revolusi gagal? Ada. Kisah cinta berantakan? Pasti. Trauma masa lalu yang dilupakan? Too real. Struktur siklus novel ini kayak cermin kebiasaan kita sendiri. Teknologi boleh canggih, tapi kita tetep aja terjebak omong kosong yang sama.

■ Karakter-karakter yang bikin geleng-geleng (terus kerasa familiar). Keluarga Buendía tuh kayak temen toxic yang bikin kita gak bisa look away. Ego José Arcadio, sikap petty Amaranta, kecantikan mematikan Remedios, mereka semua hot mess yang bikin nagih. Yang bikin mereka berkesan bukan magicnya, tapi justru karena mereka terlalu manusiawi. Kita bakal meringis melihat sedikit diri sendiri di momen-momen terburuk mereka.

■ Waktu yang muter kayak orang mabok. Lupakan alur waktu linear, cerita ini muter-muter kayak orang lagi mabok yang lagi cerita. Generasi bercampur, kejadian berulang, deja vu jadi gaya hidup. Bikin pusing tapi hypnotic, dan surprisingly akurat sama cara kerja ingetan kita pas ceritain drama keluarga.

■ Kesepian di tengah keramaian sejak 1967. Keluarga Buendía merasakan "sepi di keramaian" sebelum itu jadi hashtag. Kesendirian emosional mereka terasa lebih ngena pas kita baca sambil scroll medsos. Márquez paham apa yang baru kita sadari sekarang: kita bisa terus terkoneksi tapi tetep ngerasa kayak teriak di ruang kosong.

■ Ending yang ghosting semua orang. Macondo nggak dapet ending dramatis, cuma dihapus aja kayak file sampah. Nggak ada monumen, nggak ada pelajaran, lenyap gitu aja. Serem tapi sekaligus membebaskan. Kalau seabad drama bisa hilang, mungkin fase cringey kita juga bisa. Hadiah terakhir buku ini? Izin buat move on dari yang nggak penting.)

CONCLUSION

That final hurricane wipes out Macondo and yeets the whole town into the void, leaving zero receipts. No monuments, no legacy, just poof. But somehow this total annihilation is low-key freeing. The Buendías’ toxic patterns like their isolation, their eco-ruin, their emotionally stunted love affairs aren’t relics. They’re alive and well in our 21st-century dumpster fire of climate denial, curated Instagram intimacy, and pretending we’re "fine" habits. Márquez throws a Molotov cocktail of truth and lets you sit in the wreckage. This book’s magic is in the quiet dare to break the cycle before your own story gets erased. Close the last page, and you’ll swear you hear the wind whispering: Your move.

(Badai terakhir di Macondo menghapus sekaligus melemparkan seluruh kota ke void. Nggak ada jejak, nggak ada warisan, langsung poof. Tapi anehnya, ini justru bikin lega. Pola toxic ala Buendía tuh masih hidup di zaman kita: Isolasi sosial, kerusakan lingkungan, dan hubungan emosional yang kerdil. Márquez kayak melempar bom molotov kebenaran terus ninggalin kita tenggelam dalam reruntuhan. Pesan tersembunyinya? Berani nggak buat memutus siklus ini sebelum kamu ikut kehapus? Pas nutup buku ini, angin kayak berbisik: "Giliran kamu.")