Gabriel Garcia Marquez

From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Martin's control of his prodigious material in this first authorized biography of the great Colombian novelist García Márquez is astonishing. Martin (_Journeys Through the Labyrinth_) writes with a novelist's momentum. His descriptions of García Márquez's hometown, Aracataca (fictionalized as Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude), are atmospheric without being cloying; he conducts literary exegesis deftly, like a detective hunting for clues. From isolated youth to shabby college man in thrall to Kafka and Woolf, the sexual reprobate and the Nobel Prize laureate, grounded by his marriage and community of fellow writers and friends, and by turns publicly aloof and loquacious, García Márquez seems to be many different men, but his biographer handles the contradictions with finesse. Almost entirely laudatory, the biography addresses the controversies—which generally orbit the politicized García Márquez —gingerly if at all, and renders his off-putting traits endearing. Martin has come to praise García Márquez—whom he regards as the one writer who has been as artistically influential as the early modernists (in pioneering magical realism, now a staple in fiction from the developing world) and positively Dickensian in his popular appeal. 16 pages of photos, 3 maps. (May 20) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks MagazineCritics agreed that Gerald Martin excels at everything a literary biographer needs to do. He searches for the origins of the author’s style without becoming overly erudite or psychological, and offers “consistently first-rate readings” of his works (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). Martin also places the great Latin American novelist in the context of world literature. But while some reviewers felt that if “Martin has left any stone unturned it’s hard to imagine what that might be” (Christian Science Monitor), others were dissatisfied by Martin’s failure to interrogate his subject’s relationship with the former Cuban president Fidel Castro, which prompted a few to wonder what else the author left out. A bit of pop psychologizing regarding Latin America troubled some critics as well. However, this book may be as close to the great author as we’re likely to get.Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC