Gabriel Garcia Marquez died last week. He was one of the very greatest story tellers of the twentieth century, and his craft of magical realism in One Hundred Years of Solitude, simply does not let my imagination be.
I remember vividly having to double-read huge chunks of his richly evocative narrative simply because I almost could not believe what I had read. Images of 'plagues of insomnia' and a terrible rain storm that lasts 'four years, 11 weeks and two days' simply would not leave my restless mind. Ghosts, apparitions and visions add to the magical realism as Marquez softly stirs the real world and the fantastical world to create a fertile cocktail which hooked me hard and fast.
His creative wanderings stirred a wanderlust in me that drew me to travel in South America for 6 months tracking through places he wrote about. And I sought out similar authors like the wonderful Louis de Bernieres and devoured his Latin American trilogy that starts with The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, Eva Luna by Isabel Allende, Chocolat by Joanne Harris, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, Audrey Niffenegger's Time Traveler's Wife - all these are the ones. The ones you read and lose yourself within worlds that you desperately want to wake up in.
I love words. I love their power. And their gentleness. It makes me thankful we live in such a fabulous world where we can read and learn so much. Writers like this are the reason I will never kindle. I almost smell the rain with Garcia. An experience that would be sterilised by tablet.
Long live books. Viva Marquez. Should there be a heaven, let me find myself by your side at a table with an endless bottle of Carmenere red, and ears glued transfixed to your song.
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