On the first page of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ short novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the reader is given the climax of the story–the murder of Santiago Nasar. Using an inverted story structure, however, doesn’t keep the reader from wanting to finishing the novel. Marquez blends first-person point-of-view with journalistic elements of discovery to glean the details in the how and why Santiago Nasar must meet this fate.

In a nutshell, and with apologies to Masterplots, Santiago Nasar is killed the morning following a wedding wherein the bride was found to be unchaste. She blames Santiago Nasar for compromising her purity, and her new husband returns his bride to her family as though he were returning an item to Wal-Mart whose safety seal had been broken. The bride’s twin brothers vow to kill Santiago Nasar in the morning in the name of their sister’s honor. They make no secret of their plans, and it turns out that basically everyone in town knew about the crime before it happened. It’s almost farcical the number of people who tried or meant to warn Santiago Nasar, but in the end, it was apparently fated to happen, as we know because that’s the first thing we read in the novel.

I have to admit, there was a part of me that wanted to enjoy a nicely wrapped plot twist, that perhaps Santiago Nasar was innocent, and that his innocence would be discovered at the end. But Marquez packages his storytelling much more compactly than that. We know he dies. We witness the rather gory details of the autopsy. We even get to see what happens to the sullied bride, who sticks to her story throughout although there is no character to corroborate her claims. There is no redemption for Nasar. His point of view dies with him. Just as in all stories, the whole truth is never known although there is every attempt. Marquez’ use of journalistic objectivity and omniscient point of view lend credibility to the facts, which are presented in his point of view, as he is a character in the story as well as the storyteller who tries to pull together the different strands of information years later.

But all the opinions and renditions and points of view are just that many blunted, rusty pig knives, taking stabs at the real truth without ever knowing its blood.

The elements of mystical realism in the novel, the dreams, the visions, are all signature Marquez, making the story all that more interesting. His characters are well drawn, and the magic of Marquez is in the details. Read this in a few hours just to enjoy the phenomenal storytelling of Nobel-prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez. From there, check out One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera to read a contemporary writer at the height of his game.

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