Perception is Reality

The single unifying theme of this collection of short stories is Garcia Marquez' awareness that human perception is human reality. As the reader is taken, or forced, through time as it advances, retreats, stands still, and overlaps with other times, it becomes clear that time itself is not constant but a subjective feature of the mind and as much an identifying character trait as temperament or judgment. Characters in this Faulknerian world do not so much interact as intersect, and try to communicate from their different perceptions of reality. Using this device, Garcia Marquez is able to juxtapose the living and the dead, and those in between, in a strange web of fluid time and circumstance. There is an air of witchcraft about a person buried who does not believe she is dead and who eagerly awaits the arrival of a loved one in her world...