Innocent Erendira and Other Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Other Books :  Love in the time of cholera , 1000 years of solitude

Synopsis :
Whilst her grotesque and demanding grandmother retires to bed, Erendira still has floors to wash, sheets to iron, and a peacock to feed. Exhausted , she collapses into the bed with the candle still glowing, and is fast asleep when it topples over. 872,315 pesos , her grandmother calculates, has to be repayed by Erendira has to repay for the loss of the house. As she is dragged by her grandmother from town to town and hawked to soldiers, smugglers and traders, Erendira feels herself dying. Can the love of a virgin save the young whore from her hell?

This is a collection of Gabriel's stories written in different years, translated from spanish.

Excerpt : (Picked randomly From different stories)
Only then did she understand that three thousand years had passed since the day she had a desire to eat the first orange.

'My last wish", she said to her husband, "is to be buried alive". She said it as if she wason her deathbed but she was sitting across the table in a dining room with windows through which  bright March light came pouring in.

Because a dead man can be happy with his irremediable situation.but a living person can't resign himself to be buried alive.

But we wanted her like that: ugly and glacial, like a mean contribution to our hidden defects.

( I guess I can go on and on ... but here is my fav) :
I love you so much that I wouldn't go to bed with you ...... I love you so much that every night I'd  kill the man who goes with you.

Nimue says :  If you read most stories for the multiple characters, plot and flow of events , you might not like most of the stories. If you can savour feelings , settings and moods of your environs without bothering for the cause, this is the book to be read ! The stories go slow , unravel instantly but the description will take all of the pages. Each story is as unique as it can be. the details  , the creepiness , the ugliness , everything about the story makes you sit back , read and then let it grow on your sub conciousness. Some lines you will not easily forget. Some incidents show the deepest thoughts of human heart , tender , bitter sweet , weird yet so real.
Most of the stories are kind of depressing in general read but there is beauty to each. Its magical at places , poetic in every way. I felt like I was sipping old wine with best of the platter in front of me. Take time finishing this. and you will return to read it again for sure. I did.

Others:
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Perennial; First edition. edition (August 25, 1979)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0060907010
ISBN-13: 978-0060907013
Price : 240

Rating 5/5