Book review: Seventeen Poisoned Englishmen, by Gabriel García Márquez

Not recommended, although die-hard Gabriel García Márquez completist will still get around to it.

All this author’s stories are sorrowful, tragically whimsical and operate in a Spanish-speaking, rosary-beaded sphere where the sandstorms of fate roll in and whip sad lives away to oblivion. However, One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera are his masterworks in literature, whereas this book contains four stories not quite good enough to be published. 3 out of 10, try again. We see the plight of characters critically stressed, pointless entrapments, meaningless deaths and a sense of timeless drifting in places where nothing matters and no one’s bothering to save you. Everyone’s a footnote and the reader won’t turn back.

If you like this book somehow, I recommend you try Mr Loveday’s Little Outing, by Evelyn Waugh, which is an equally hollow high-literature dose of sorrow and meaningless killing.

This book was charitably brief and left me trying to shake away a little cloud of depression. If this title (I don’t mean the exceptional author) is on your reading list, my advice is to shorten it immediately.