content: The first paragraph of this book is one of the greatest in literary history. It's enough to compel the reader to read the next one hundred pages. Unfortunately, the book becomes one of the most overrated in history.Many of the praises given say the book is difficult, confusing, and yet they come to the conclusion it is a great book. Why? Why not just say that difficult and confusing books are not very good. This is a parable with many characters, magic realism (a genre that deserves to be ignored, though that's another discussion. To give Marquez credit, his magical realism is a response to the limits placed upon him by the government he lived under, but it is, nevertheless, a poor literary form and when imitated purely awful), and the intertwining of lives, but they just don't move. The story only makes the reader wonder what the big fuss is all about?Marquez' book about Miguel Litton, and News of a Kidnapping are much better, but this book just bores and bores.