A literature course called Great Novellas beckoned me. I enrolled on it in order to discover writers or works I had not encountered before, and to sample fine writing I might learn from in order to improve my craft. This was one of the books on that course.

My first attempt to read a book by Marquez was not entirely successful. That is to say, I gave up after about five pages. “Magic realism?”, I thought. “I don’t think so.”

Therefore it was with some foreboding that I opened this book. I need not have worried: I was gripped from the first sentence.

A little like Giovanni’s Room in that we know from the outset what the outcome will be, this is a wonderful study in how the same event can be seen, or at least remembered, in many different ways by different people., and how everyone assumes someone else must know about something or be doing something about it.

A catalogue of errors and unforeseen consequences, as one of the participants on the Great Novellas course put it, this reads like a farce or, as another of the participants described it, a black farce.

The conceit or plotting device is that of someone trying to piece together exactly what happened twenty five years after the event. It therefore reads like a non-fiction account. Indeed, it reminded me in some ways of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

Threaded throughout is Marquez’s inimitable prose. Who can deny the sheer brilliance of:

A thoroughly enjoyable read.