Review – Collected Stories of Gabriel García Márquez

In my personal pantheon of great writers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez ranks in the top three. His prose is beautiful. The words flow like a river of poetry across the page. His stories are grounded in magic realism where both the real and unreal exist side by side. And every story of his that I’ve read, either short pieces or novels, leaves me feeling as if I’ve just woken from a dream. 

Yeah, he is – or was – an amazing writer. I only wish I could read him in his native Spanish. Alas, my foreign language skills aren’t good enough, so I have to rely on translations of his work.

His Collected Stories are a great place to start if you aren’t familiar with his work. This book contains twenty-six stories in chronological order, which allows you to see his progression as a writer. What I found interesting is that his early stories are just as good as his later ones, but I could see his maturity become more prevalent in his writing as I worked my way through the book.

I think I’ve previously read at least half of these, so those were nice to revisit. The ones that were new to me didn’t necessarily surprise me. Not that they weren’t wonderful reads, but it was what I expected of him. Beautiful prose, compelling characters, and a fine balance between sadness and humor. 

Marquez generally wrote about the people and locations that were desperate, poor, and balanced somewhere between fantasy and reality. He also wasn’t afraid to show the decadent and dark side of humanity. I am always amazed by his ability to paint a bleak picture but still show humor and love.

A few of the stories stand out to me a bit more than the others. These include “The Other Side of Death”, written in 1948. It’s told from the perspective of a corpse lying in state in his family’s home. He’s dead, but a small amount of consciousness and self-awareness remain as he remembers his past and comes to accept the reality of his surroundings.

“Eyes of a Blue Dog” is also an early favorite that I read many years ago. It’s the story of a man and woman who only meet in their dreams. She searches for him during her waking hours, speaking the phrase, “Eyes of a blue dog.”, to every man she sees in the hopes that he will recognize it. It’s a dark and surreal tale of unfulfilled love.

One of the later stories that stuck with me was “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”. Again, Marquez makes the fantastic feel real when a husband and wife discover an old man with wings lying in their rain-soaked yard. He babbles incoherently in another language that no one can understand, but everyone assumes he is an angel. The couple put him up in their chicken coop and begin charging admission for people to see him, which eventually makes them extremely wealthy. But who is the old man? Where did he come from? Is he an angel?

There’s also “The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship”. In addition to this being a wonderfully magic story, it’s told in one sentence. It’s a six-and-a-half-page long sentence, but it flows so quickly in a stream-of-consciousness patter that it felt like reading a dream. It’s an amazing piece of writing.

I also enjoyed “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” because it shows how desperate people can make up and apply a story to anything to make it relatable, to attach themselves to it, and turn a simple event into a legend. Basically, the corpse of a stranger washes up on the shore near a remote and desolate village. The townsfolk clean him up and adopt him as one of their own. It’s melancholy and beautiful, with just a touch of humor.

Of course, I highly recommend anything by Marquez, but his short stories always seem to draw me back. If you’re new to him, please pick up a copy of this collection and allow yourself to be carried away by some of the most beautiful prose you’ll ever encounter. 

For more book reviews and recommendations, check out my Reading List page.

RB