Vivir para contarla [Live to Tell]

After reading the book a while, I encountered sexual content that caused me to quit reading the book.
Also, it seemed to me that the book jumped around from boyhood days to adult days of experiences.
I would not recommend the book

"Living to Tell the Tale," ("Vivir Para Contarla"), is the first book in a planned trilogy that will make up the memoirs of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the renown Colombian writer who initially won public acclaim in the mid-1960s for his novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude." At that time, Garcia Marquez, a journalist and writer, had never sold more than 700 copies of a book. While driving his family through Mexico, he had a veritable brainstorm. He remembered his grandmother's storytelling technique - to recall fantastic, improbable events as if they had actually happened - literally. That was the key to recounting the life of the imaginary village of Macondo and her inhabitants. He turned the car around and drove back home to begin "One Hundred Years of Solitude" anew. To my mind it is one of the 20th century's best works of fiction, and was highlighted in the citation awarding Garcia Marquez the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.

"Living to Tell The Tale" relates the early years of the author's life, although some of the book's most important incidents predate Garcia Marquez's birth. The impact of these experiences, the people and their stories, were to have a powerful effect on him, as a man and as a writer. This is the tale of his parents' courtship, marriage and the birth of their children, Garcia Marquez, (Gabito), the oldest, and his ten siblings. It tells of his early years which were spent in Aracataca, in the home of his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Colonel Nicolás Ricardo Márquez Mejía, was a Liberal veteran of the War of a Thousand Days. He was supposedly a storyteller of great repute. The Colonel told his young grandson that there was no greater burden than to have killed a man. Later García Márquez would put these words into the mouths of his characters. His grandmother, Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes, had a major influence on Gabriel's life also. Another great source of stories, her mind was filled with superstitions and folklore, and she gossiped away with her numerous sisters within hearing range of young "Gabito." No matter how fantastic her statements, she always delivered them as if they were the absolute, verifiable truth. This was the style which was to effect Garcia Marquez's fiction, sometimes called "magical realism." These women filled the house with stories of ghosts, premonitions and omens - all of which were studiously ignored by her husband. He had little interest in "women's beliefs."

Aracataca was a small village, a banana town on the Caribbean coast, where poverty was the norm and violence was an everyday occurrence. On December 6, 1928, in the Cienaga train station, near Aracataca, 3,000 striking banana workers were shot and killed by troops from Antioquia. Although still a baby, this event, recounted to him, was to have a profound effect on the author. The incident was officially forgotten and omitted from Colombian history textbooks.

In 1940, when he was twelve, Gabo was awarded a scholarship to a secondary school for gifted students, run by Jesuits. The school, the Liceo Nacional, was in Zipaquirá, a city 30 miles to the north of Bogotá. It was during his school years, 1940s and 50s, that he was first drawn to poetry - a national obsession in Colombia. Verse was revered as an art form, and also as an effective means of social and political commentary. He and his friends, fellow students, would read aloud and discuss poetry late into the night. The youths admired a group of poets called the piedra y cielo ("stone and sky") and they were strongly influenced by Juan Ramon Jimenez and Pablo Neruda. Too poor to buy his own books, Gabo would devour novels borrowed from friends.

While still a boy, he decided he wanted to be a writer. The people who surrounded him in his childhood later became instrumental when developing the characters and the storylines for his novels. "Love In The Time of Cholera" was inspired by the romance between his mother and father. And his grandfather, who had twelve children, (some say 16), by two different women, became Colonel Aureliano Buendia in "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

One of the most powerful episodes of the book tells of the period called "La Violencia." In 1948 the Liberal presidential candidate, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, was assassinated. The murder led to rioting, and left approximately 2500 dead on the streets of Bogota, during "el Bogotázo." Political violence and repression followed. One of the buildings that burned was the pension where Garcia Marquez lived, and his manuscripts were destroyed along with his living quarters. The National University was closed and he was forced to go to the university in Cartagena. Garcia Marquez began his career as a journalist, writing stories and commentary for a Liberal newspaper in Cartegana. Later he moved to the coastal city of Barranquilla where he began to associate with a group of young writers who admired modernists like Joyce, Woolf and Hemingway, and introduced Marquez to Faulkner. In 1954 he returned to Bogota, as a reporter for El Espectador.

Garcia Marquez begins his book, however, not with his real birth in 1928, but with his "birth as a writer," at age 22. He and his mother took a trip from Baranquilla, where he was working as a reporter, to his childhood home in Aracataca, now virtually a ghost town. They were going to sell the ancestral house. Vivid memories were stirred up here, memories which electrified his imagination. This trip was to change the course of his writing life. "With the first step I took onto the burning sands of the town, Aracataca instantly became Macondo, an earthly paradise of desolation and nostalgia." His one great subject became his family, "which was never the protagonist of anything, but only a witness to and victim of everything." His is not a chronological autobiography. Garcia Marquez cuts back and forth through time to show how memory colors experience. As he says in the book's epigraph, "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it."

Humor, dry wit, a sense of the absurd, is a trademark throughout the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and this autobiography is full of his deadpan humor. His anecdotes of his many mistresses and cafe society are wonderful. "Living To Tell The Tale" is not a conventional literary memoir. It is a magical combination of memoir and national history written in the author's remarkable voice. It is his personal mythology, from the repertoire which birthed Macondo. The narrative is intimate and sincere, filled with bewitching details and descriptions. In spite of poverty, and the political turmoil so prevalent in Colombia during his lifetime, Gabo acknowledges his early years were filled with joy, a sense of well-being and encouragement from many people. Garcia Marquez leaves us, at the end of this volume, with a glimpse of his future love, his wife, ""wearing a green dress with golden lace in that year's style, her hair cut like swallows' wings, and with the intense stillness of someone waiting for a person who will not arrive."

Bravo Gabriel Garcia Marquez!!

JANA

This book is merely the first volume in the author's three-part autobiography, and covers only the period that goes from his birth in 1927 to 1955, when he was already a more or less well-known writer in Colombia... All the same, it is an essential way to start if we want to know more about him, as a writer but also as a person.

If you buy "Vivir para contarla", you can expect a wonderful prose, interesting and somewhat strange metaphors, and the kind of description that manages to capture a moment in such a way that the reader feels that he was there too. An excellent example of that is what García Marquez writes about the moment when he arrives at Cartagena after leaving Bogotá in the aftermath of the great 1948 riot: "A principios de la semana había dejado a Bogotá chapaleando en un pantano de sangre y lodo, todavía con promotorios de cadáveres sin dueños abandonados entre escombros humeantes. De pronto, el mundo se había vuelto otro en Cartagena. No había rastros de la guerra que asolaba el país y me costaba trabajo creer que aquella soledad sin dolor, aquel mar incesante, aquella inmensa sensación de haber llegado me estaban sucediendo apenas una semana después en una misma vida". Incredible, isn't it?.

The author shares information about his eccentric extended family, and stories where myth and reality seem so mixed that they are impossible to differentiate. García Marquez also tells details of his school years, when he learnt from books but also from people: "No sé que aprendí en realidad durante el cautiverio del Liceo Nacional, pero los cuatro años de convivencia bien avenida con todos me infundieron una visión unitaria de la nación, descubrí cuán diversos éramos y para qué servíamos, y aprendí para no olvidarlo nunca que en la suma de cada uno de nosotros estaba todo el país". It is rather funny to read how much he disliked to study, and the way he avoided questions by talking of his great passion: literature. Afterwards he would try to study law, but his heart wasn't on that, so he abandoned his studies after a while to dedicate all his energies to writing...

The reader will be treated to a great description of his innumerable friends, and will feel he also was part of their daily discussions about literature, and Colombia. The curious reader will learn about García Marquez's favorite books, ideas, and reasons for writing. He says that "Cada cosa, con sólo mirarla, me suscitaba una ansiedad irresistible de escribir para no morir", and remembers what Rilke wrote: "Si usted cree que es capaz de vivir sin escribir, no escriba".

On the whole, I highly recommend this book. Reading it is remembering that the power of words is so great that it can make us visit places we haven't gone to, and live lives different to our own...

Belen Alcat

Si en algo coincidimos lo venezolanos, tan divididos ideológicamente gracias al régimen chavista, fue en tratar de sobrevivir el paro nacional indefinido que duró más de dos meses de diciembre del 2002 hasta febrero del 2003, leyendo Vivir para Contarla. Esos meses de incertidumbre cuando los caraqueños no hablábamos de política, nos preguntábamos ¿por dónde vas? ¿qué te parece? Los comentarios eran varios, tampoco con tanta marchadera y contramarchadera estábamos mucho como para leer la historia de un niño que vive en un pueblito perdido a cientos de kilómetros de la civilización, después de todo esa historia ya la leímos, con el debido filtro literario en las maravillosas novelas del Nobel colombiano; pero el niño crece y se convierte en un pichón de escritor, en un brillante y precoz periodista, la historia cambia y nos regresa a los venezolanos a tanta realidad nacional, leyendo la historia de Gaitán, un líder populista que unos aman y otros odian, de su asesinato que provocó una Guerra Civil que ha durado tantos años, ha traído tantos muertos y que quizás se pudo evitar, de un Gabo que vivió esos momentos históricos detrás de la barrera y que hoy justifica con su silencio el encarcelamiento de 60 periodistas y poetas disidentes de un regimen que no permite la libertad de pensamiento, como es el cubano. En estos momentos tan polarizados, en los cuales tratamos de encontrar luces que nos expliquen por qué en el mundo está triunfando la sin razón de la violencia, Vivir para Contarla es una lectura sabrosa, pero no termina de explicarnos al hombre que hoy es Gabriel García Márquez.

I have been a fan of Garcia Marquez and his stories since 1980, after I read "Cien Anos de Soledad".
All of his previous books and short stories have been mostly a sample of great stories from a wonderful story teller; in contrast, the flavor this book gives you is one where you feel as if he were telling you, face to face, his early years, from BEFORE he was born to when he was about 30 years old. This volume is the first in a trilogy that will make up his memoirs.
This book will give you a great insight on his background, his family, how he came to invent all the fantastic stories and characters that make up his books.
He began his literary life as a cartoonist and a poet; later, in his late teens he began writing short stories, commentaries and some editorials (mostly anonymously) for different newspapers in Colombia. He sees this period of his life as the one where he came to hone his skills, which eventually -in 1982-brought him the Nobel prize of literature.
This book is not just a narrative of his life; he also gives the reader many insights on the way he approaches a story, the mechanics of it, and what he expects to see in his finished piece.
If you are a fan of Gabo (his nickname)or you are merely a lover of great literature -I see Hemingway as a comparison-, you will love this book and will look forward to Gabo's second volume, sometime in the next two years.
P.S. I read this book three times and each time I noticed different things that I had missed the first time I read it.

Although I can consider myself a GGM fiction fan, I encountered "Vivir Para Contarla" utterly more attention-grabbing than any of his other works. Perhaps It was just the fact that he related his real life, from the time before his birth until he was something like twenty eight years old, in such a magical way that I could just not put the book down for more than a few moments. I could come across in this volume with so much of the background that made the genius in Gabo, that I could not accept it as factual. Actually I was so beguiled by the story, by the idiosyncrasy of his large and astonishing family, by the actual brilliance and intelligence of the child, the adolescent and the young man in Gabo, that I unreservedly supposed I was immersed in one more of this author's accomplishments. He relates his non precedent childhood and early adolescent years as a conspicuous reader and writer of poems and stories- which he memorized and recited by hearth-, as a distinguished picture drawer, as a notable singer, as an extremely timid person, in sum: as another character out of its novellas and short stories. He, at the same time, enriches our reading with his detailed and exhaustive career as an anonymous young journalist in Colombia, who spends an awesome amount of his free time discussing literature with his fellow workers and friends, at a time period when literature was the coolest matter to be involved in. However, the social and political backgrounds of his whereabouts are so precise and stuck to Colombian and the World's historic and social events, that henceforth what he conveys us in this first volume of his autobiography must have a great deal of reality in it.
In spite of the fact that a myriad of the characters, locations and events that we find as basis for his novellas and short stories come out of his real life, I do not believe it imperative to be acquainted to any of his other masterpieces in order to devour and absolutely enjoy this volume. It stands unique by itself!
I am anxiously waiting for the subsequent volumes of this trilogy, however due to the actual author's sickness; I don't believe we will be receiving the complete trilogy at all.

Definitivamente es uno de los mejores libros que he leído, es fascinante como Gabriel García Márquez describe su vida, principalmente su juventud y sus inicios como periodista y escritor...
Siendo una ávida lectora de este autor, no podía más que maravillarme por cada uno de los aspectos de su vida. Como viniendo de una familia pobre logra sus sueños de ser escritor a pesar de la oposición inicial de sus padres. Este primer libro sólo llega hasta el lanzamiento de "La hojarasca" y hasta su primer viaje fuera de Colombia (Europa)...
Al acercarme cada vez más al final, más trataba de demorarlo, fue MARAVILLOSO leer este libro!!!, GGM nos deja preparados para el próximo libro, lamentablemente debemos esperar, pero la espera será gratificada cuando lo tengamos en nuestras manos.
Uno de los aspectos más relevantes es la forma en que fue escrito, es decir, como García Márquez entrelaza su realidad con la realidad del país y como en algún momento me pareció estar leyendo una solo historia, no la de un hombre y su país.

Creo que lo mejor antes de leer "Vivir para contarla" es haber leído algunas de sus obras, para mí particularmente fue así, ver referencias de libros que ya he tenido la fortuna de leer fue muy edificante, me ayudó a entender mucho más a este premio novel (1982), a conocer las historias que dieron origen a muchos de sus libros, como "La hojarasca", "Cien años de soledad", "Crónica de una muerte anunciada", "Relato de un náufrago", "Del Amor y Otros Demonios" entre otros, a saber como surge el famoso pueblo ficticio "Macondo", así como a entender un sinnúmero de personajes que a lo largo de su carrera ha utilizado en sus libros y que de alguna manera lo tocaron en su propia vida.

Gabriel García Márquez ha demostrado nueva vez que es un genio de la literatura latinoamericana, su forma de escribir nunca acabará de sorprenderme y de cautivarme. Definitivamente todas aquellas personas interesadas en conocer más a "Gabito" deberían comprar y guardar en su colección de libros más preciados "Vivir para Contarla".

This is an extremely fun book to read. No big dramas, not complicated plots, just Gabriel García Márquez life history. But you're going to find yourself reading it in the most unexpected places, 'cause you won't be able to stop or let it go! It is writen in his classic style, jumping from the past to the further past to the recent past in a single page. But what is really fascinating of this book is that almost every single character of his past novels appears here, but in flesh & blood. You will find out why "Love In The Time Of Cholera" was written for (and who's story it is), what the name "Macondo" stands for, and why "Nigromanta" was such a fascinating and important character on "One Hundred Years of Solitude".
If you are craving for the new Nobel Prize winning novel, maybe you're looking at the wrong place, but if you like García Márquez "lighter" books and enjoy a very well written book, and a writer that has the ability to convert a simple disfunctional ordinary family history into one of the best books ever, then you will certainly enjoy "To Live To Count It".

This is an extremely fun book to read. No big dramas, not complicated plots, just Gabriel García Márquez life history. But you're going to find yourself reading it in the most unexpected places, 'cause you won't be able to stop or let it go! It is writen in his classic style, jumping from the past to the further past to the recent past in a single page. But what is really fascinating of this book is that almost every single character of his past novels appears here, but in flesh & blood. You will find out why "Love In The Time Of Cholera" was written for (and who's story it is), what the name "Macondo" stands for, and why "Nigromanta" was such a fascinating and important character on "One Hundred Years of Solitude".
If you are craving for the new Nobel Prize winning novel, maybe you're looking at the wrong place, but if you like García Márquez "lighter" books and enjoy a very well written book, and a writer that has the ability to convert a simple disfunctional ordinary family history into one of the best books ever, then you will certainly enjoy "To Live To Count It".

El primer libro de la narrativa en español que leí por el placer mismo de hacerlo fue Cien Años de Soledad de Gabriel García Márquez, pues su lectura no era mandatoria en Puerto Rico hace treinta años, cuando yo era estudiante de secundaria. A este genio universal de las letras y a su obra, le debo el amor por los libros que nació entonces en mí y que con un subir y bajar en intensidad se ha negado a abandonarme a pesar del tiempo transcurrido. Leer Vivir Para Contarla fue como un soplo de oxígeno sobre un fuego que logró revivir ese amor que recién andaba cuesta abajo. El estímulo que Gabo me dió al finalizar la lectura de sus memorias fue suficiente para que en pocas semanas redescubriera, degustara y me enamorarme de nuevo de la media docena de novelas en español que desde entonces he disfrutado, más de las que he leído en años recientes.

"The complete works of García Márquez are a must but the first volume of his memoirs is another masterpiece", as quoted in "The New Essential Guide to Spanish Reading" published by America Reads Spanish, a campaign aimed to increase the use and reading of the Spanish language through the thousands of libraries, schools and book stores in the US . The guide continues, "Donna Seaman of the Booklist wrote in her review: "Invaluable in its personal and cultural history, and triumphant in its compassion and artistry, García Márquez's portrait of himself as a young writer is as revelatory and powerful as his fiction.""

This is a foretold story. The story you have read in "One Hundred Years of Solitude" but fom the author's real life perspective, from García Márquez own life standpoint. All the details shown teach us about "realismo mágico", it shows us why García-Márquez won the Nobel 20 years ago. It's a book about life, philosophy, politics and advise...on how to live from an old wise man perspective, at the García-Marquez way. You will enjoy the book like no other, you will laugh in silence but also your tears will come down your face. Probably the best work from Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez ever

Ambos escribieron en momentos difíciles de la sociedad en que vivieron. El siglo de Cervantes, el siglo de oro de las letras españolas, fue al mismo tiempo el momento de la decandencia del poder español.
La época de García Márquez ha sido de las más difíciles de América Latina.
Sin embargo, las gentes de esas sociedades vivieron las vidas más humanas de su época, desde lo más bajo hasta lo más sublime. Cervantes y García Márquez vivieron para contárnoslo.
¡Cómo brilla el español en la pluma de estos dos! ¡Qué placer poder dominar el español y leer sus obras!

I'm a Garcia fan.

It seems, that either you're a fan or you are not. And it also seems, that whatever side you're on, you can't convince the other side.

So ..., I'm not going to try that.

Let me just list the lessons I've learned from this book.

Stories sell.

I know this from my profession and I use it every day to sell, but I'm not talking about money here.

It's just that a great story arouses interest.

And we DO have a great story here. In fact, Garcia is a master story teller. He's so good, that almost every paragraph is a little story on its own. And what's even more, Garcia again shows his unique ability to create seamless transitions from one story to another.

Even more astonishing is the way Garcia plays with time.

The books starts at a certain point in his live and then goes back and forth in time without ever disturbing the instinctive 'flow'. He never leaves you guessing where you are in terms of time. Awesome!

I've learned about the personal life of a great writer.

I'm a long-time fan of Garcia. I guess that's one aspect of what makes this book so interesting. You get to know the background and that enables you to place his novels in another perspective: that of the author. Until now his (great) books were just that. This books shows the 'reason why' they were written.

I've learned about a culture and a way of living that was unknown to me.

Funny coincidence was, that I recently met a Columbian professional dancer, who consulted me to establish a new website for his business. To me, reading To Live to Tell better explains the unpredictable character and sometimes behavior of this person. That was a great help.

As I explained this to him, his comment was: "The book describes exactly how we, Columbians, think and act."

Hope this helps.

Still, apart from the lessons I've learned, it's a great book that I wholeheartedly can recommend reading.

Case Stevens

El libro me impacto desde una de sus primeras frases: la vida no es la que uno vive sino la que uno recuerda para contarla. Entonces todos somos unos fabuladores aunque no la escribamos en el papel. Para los que hemos seguido la pluma de Garcia Marquez, vivir para contarla es un postre literario. Mi curiosidad me lleva a preguntarme como nacen las ideas de los libros en sus autores. En esta primera entrega de su biografia, Garcia Marquez no solo cuenta su vida sino tambien la vida de un pais y la de sus historias. Un libro indispensable para los seguidores de Garcia Marquez.

This book is the first in a series. Frankly, I hope that in his next memoir there iwll be more about his literary writing b/c this doesn't cover his marvelous literary career at all.

The first sections of the book which deal with his childhood and schooling are comic and moving, with great turns of phrase and details about his grandfather and large family. What I found less interesting were the accounts of his journalism career. Apart from a very compelling section about a political asassination and its aftermath, I was a little bored. Even worse, I did not feel that some of his bohemian friends were distinguished from each other.

I am going to go back and reread The General in His Labyrinth and the novels that I so adore. I just prefer them.

Para los amantes de Gabito este libro es lectura obligatoria y un placer a los sentidos. Es el primer tomo de la autobiografía de Gabito. En el, Garcia Marquez cuenta la historia de su vida desde el noviazgo de sus padres, hasta la publicación de La Horasca. Cada frase es deliciosa. Y se aprende mucho de la vida, motivos y sentimientos del autor; sus relaciones con la familia y amigos y el porque de muchas cosas en sus obras, como su relación con las mujeres, y el papel protagonista que ellas representan siempre en todas sus novelas. Como escrito es genial, como todo lo de Gabo. Es muy real, caribeño, y sincero en revelar los elementos y personas que lo formaron como hombre y como escritor. También el libro muestra la vida y costumbres Colombianas de la época y la manera Caribeña de ver las relaciones de amistad, noviazgo y relaciones sexuales. Esperando que salga el segundo tomo para no quedarnos con las ganas de saber mas sobre la otra mitad de su vida y man aún, con las ganas de leer mas frases de Gabito.

Garcias Marquez es uno de los mas grandes escritores de nuestra epoca,como es posible que un hombre de esta supuesta sensibilidad olvide que su "amigo" el unico dictador Latino Americano del año 2000 Fidel Castro-repita escenas del Otoño del Patriarca y mas- Tres "NEGROS" cubanos fueron asesinados, fusilados sumariamente por tratar se usar una pequeña lancha (propiedad del gobierno como todo en Cuba) y salir de la isla en busca libertad.
Los poetas como tu,Raul Rivero entre otros fueron encarcelados y los veremos morir de extrañas enfermedades,VIVIR PARA CONTARLA,y entonces Gabriel que es mas importante seguir el juego "Para Contarlo" despues de la muerte de Castro o anteponer tu ultima novela (quizas un Nobel) a la causa de un pueblo tan cercano a tu Cartagena caribeña que por semejantes hasta nos cofunden en la manera de hablar, yo no escribo, no soy importante,nadie me conoce y solo nos vimos un dia en la Habana (importante para mi olvidado por ti) Pero ahora Que tienes que decir? a favor o en contra, te queremos oir, para el pueblo de Cuba son ya 44 años de soledad.

Well, yes, García Márquez is not at a loss for words here, and Vivir para contarla, like a general retired from an old forgotten Colombian civil war, has earned its five stars handily.
For a long time, critics wondered what sort of reality stood behind those eerie books that so helped revive the genre of the novel from the slumbers of dire realism, not to speak of that awful French misnomer and dead end: the Nouveau Roman. Was the world of Macondo invented, egregiously exaggerated or quite simply viewed through the lens of a child fond of absurd fairy tales? Before this book was published, most of what we readers could do was speculate about the question. Now, however, García Márquez opens a window that long ago he promised he would never open, and talks about the background underlying his narrative world in this long memoir and, hopefully, in the next, which is supposed to end eleven years later, in 1967, with the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude (he has promised a third volume dealing with his admired (?) politicians, Salinas, Torrijos, Castro, not his strongest suit and one which certainly does not look appetizing.)
Apart from the literary pleasure derived from the mastery of the written voice, the reader should bear in mind that the world described in Vivir para contarla has been swept away by violence, voracious politicians and sheer abandonment since the time when little Gabo ran circles around crazy aunts, salacious nieces, and unstable uncles that made his everyday life appear so astonishing. Aracataca, his hometown, has been almost destroyed by successive guerrilla and paramilitary occupations, and that poetic Provincia from which his mother and his father wrote and received love telegrams is deep in the mud of civil strife and drug trade, intended this last item for American and European noses. Literature, however, seems to offer us another viewpoint, saying that if life down South has lately become so fragile a possibility, for that same reason it can be made to look lyric and fantastic, in order, perhaps, not to declare it unlivable.

In order to enjoy this book, you must be a Garcia Marquez fan or at least have read a few of his other books before. If you pick this book up and are exposed to GGM for the first time though this, his memoirs, you will be bored to death, let alone clueless about what he is writing about.
For us GGM addicts, this book is another stroke of GGM's genius. You'll learn about the though process of the genius who practically invented magic realism.

Macondo ("Solitude") and the unnamed "city of the viceroys" ("Cholera"), while perfectly "real" and realized in a literary sense, seemed to this reader not to quite sit anywhere on any actual South American landscape but after the reading to shimmer above plain or coast like Remedios beginning her ascent to heaven with the laundry. "Living to Tell the Tale" at last brings them down to earth (for a Northern reader, anyway), connecting these cities of the imagination with the real Colombia as known so profoundly in so many of its dimension by the author. What's most remarkable is how many of even the most fanciful-seeming details of the novels derive directly or through transmutation from the author's own life in Colombia (presuming we can trust the factuality of the history, whose author refuses to let us grow comfortable with traditional notions of truth and tale). The author manages to satisfy our curiosity for a behind-the-scenes peek at the formation of an artist while creating a brand-new work of art that merits praise in its own right. Here we see a young man struggling to comprehend and exercise his own gifts at the same time that (more troubling) others are recognizing those gifts and expecting or depending on him to make much of them. Here we see a life lived in the midst of a people at once united in the joy of life and torn apart by political forces that threaten with violence and poverty. Like many other Gabo fans, I eagerly awaited the appearance of this book and read it as soon as I could pull back the cover. Now that I'm done reading it, I remain grateful for this late gift from an author who will surely endure as long as literature itself does, alongside the likes of Joyce and Nabokov. Yet I can't agree in whole with many of the early reviewers who in the glow of excitement over this publishing event seem to have overlooked some of the book's flaws, for flaws there are.

I just finished the 579 pages of Gabo's memories and immediately imagined that a sequence was going to be written. I am a regular reader of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his memories are very helpful for writers, journalists and readers in general. He kindly shares his experiences as a writer, how he was a devouted reader, what inspired his novels and how his live developed in his beloved Colombia. As a Puerto Rican I feel honored of my latin american heritage and how caribbean Colombians and our people have so much in common. This is a master book to be read.

"Life is not what you have lived, else the what remember, and how remember to count it", so their book begins, Gabo. This is a brilliant book, where Gabriel narrates their first 29 years of their life in a magic way, where you don't know if it is an I count that suddenly these in the past and you then locate you that they are else memories, it is also a book of history of a Colombia that is torn the same as all the Latin American countries, for the hands of interests bought from beginning of century and that until today in day the effects even persist. Gabriel to the end leaves you in the flavor in the mind of continuing waiting for the continuation of their memoirs, how alone the knows how to it to make. This is a book that you eat with pleasure of beginning to end and that you don't want that it finish. I recommend it am a magnify book done art.

La memoria, el recuerdo, las horas vividas que se mantienen vívidas aunque a veces irreales. El cuento como cuento de una vida sin cuento. No importa, hay veces que el recuerdo de cómo pareció ser es más importante que la realidad de cómo fue. Mi realidad será diferente a la tuya cuando hagamos ese recuento. Tus recuerdos unidos a los míos forman dos novelas diferentes. Gabo nos habla de estos laberintos y nos lleva de la mano por el túnel de su memoria con una vela encendida para que sólo veamos su realidad. Como debe ser. Gracias de nuevo por encender esa llama que aclara y no ciega.

Este primer volumen de las memorias de García Márquez me la enviaron desde Colombia como un regalo.
Para los amantes de Gabo, como yo, el libro es de una dimensión extraordinaria!
En un cambio total de género, ésta autobiografía demuestra que GGM es uno de los mejores escritores de nuestro tiempo. Gabo convierte su vida real y la de su familia en un relato inolvidable. Se develan los misterios de los personajes de sus obras, se es testigo de su vida como escritor, de su vida como ser humano. Se es testigo de la historia de Colombia.
Lo leí muy despacio para que no se me acabaran tan rápido sus 579 páginas. Cuando por fin lo terminé de leer sentí el desasosiego de querer más. Sólo espero que no se tarde mucho el segundo tomo

This is a wonderful book. However, if you have never read anything by Garcia Marquez, please don't start with this one! Trust me, you will enjoy "Vivir Para Contarla" a lot more if you are already familiar with his work. And please, PLEASE, refer to him as Garcia Marquez (or better yet, el Gabo). He chose to use BOTH his parents' names so PLEASE respect this choice. And just in case you didn't know (which I doubt), he won the Nobel Prize in 1982, "for his NOVELS and SHORT STORIES, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts".

This is much more than an autobiography, it is a piece of art by itself. Gabo takes us around his extended family in northern Colombia in an encyclopedic journey throughout life, love, history and the magical world he depicted in his previous work. Those who have read his novels will find the inspiration for some of his characters and stories. There is no question about it: he enjoys to "novelar" as he describes the way to write novels. His foreword tells you all: Life is not what you have lived, but the what you remember, and how you remember it to tell it (my translation)

Es indudablemente uno de los mejores libros escritos en la historia de la literatura...A diferencia de otros comentarios considero que los lectores sin previo conocimiento de Garcia Marquez lo disfutaran igualmente, incluso eso hara que se lean las otra obras maestras del Gabo e incluso volver a leer sus memorias..me faltan 20 paginas para terminar y de verdad que no quiero hacerlo...

Este libro es otra obra maestra del don Gabriel Garcia Marquez. El lenguaje es exquisito y nos permite la oportunidad de desarollar un mejor entendimiento de la obra y vida de unos de los autores mas importantes y influyentes del ultimo siglo. Espero que lo compre y que lo disfrute!

When something is good, there is very little to say: Read it!
It is one of the very few books that as you get to the end of it, you realize that you are sad because it will be over.
(My only true concern is that I can't imagine how this book would feel translated to English. I'm sure it won't work. The solution: learn spanish!).

Lo que hace este libro ser tan especial es la manera tan viva que el auto hace revivir sus acontecimientos y/o experiencias. El lector de una manera hace parte de la historia, y se siente atrapado por el contexto. Es una obra magnifica por uno de los mejores escritores hispanos.

Are you serious? I can't buy a García Marquez book in Mexico! I'll never understand those silly availability and region policies. I can go to the library near my house and get this and any Gabo's book. I'm very, very disappointed with the offer of kindle books in Spanish.