This book was very thought invoking and funny. I enjoyed reading it and discovering the hidden lessons within it. But there were some things that just felt unfinished. To Garcia-Marquez, they are funny, little jokes. To me, they are stay up late pondering about them questions that will never be answered.

My biggest issue is with Angela and Bayardo. He threw me in such a loop! First Angela doesn’t want to give Bayardo a time of day, then she pines after him for half a lifetime. I understand it’s a power move to get back into society, but I could not seem to completely rap my brain around it. She had seemed like the type of person not to be bothered by that stuff. What’s crazier is that Bayardo came back! All because he felt guilty about barring her from society and marriage, not for love. It makes me wonder if they will even last. I feel like they are equally match in spirit, Angela with her masked hatred and Bayardo with his gigantic ego. I would buy and read a second book to find out who wins! Although, maybe not because Garcia-Marquez might just use it as another opportunity to create more unanswered questions.

Another thing I felt cheated on was the years in between Baryardo leaving the sinful town and him eventually reuniting with Angela. What was he doing that made him deteriorate so much? Does he still have money or was he pretending? Why did he never try to remarry? With the double standard for men in the book, along with his good looks and money, I’m sure he could have gotten another acceptable marriage.

The Mayor got on my nerves a lot. He was basically useless. Even Father Amador called him a “barbarian” and his orders “stupid” (Garcia-Marquez 72). When he found out about the coming murderer, he practically gave them a slap on the wrist. He took their knives and sent them to bed. When he found out that they got knew knives and were trying to track Santiago Nasar down and kill him, Colonel Aponte decided to finish planning a domino game before dealing with it! By the time he was finished, the killing was over. After all that, he still stayed the mayor. I was very confused by that. He may have shown his strength through war, but was not his failure to prevent the murder enough to get him removed from office? Why would the people of the town continue to follow a spineless leader?

The Angela’s mother, Pura Vicario, was very puzzling. For a mother that supposedly loved her family very much, she had a funny way of showing it. She literally beat Angela to a bloody pulp. Also, she raised her daughters to never dream about anything in life except marriage. But, maybe the way she raised them was a sign of love in her own way. She raised her daughters so that they would be good wives that could easily marry into rich families.

Now I did not write this whole blog post to drag Chronicles of a Death Foretold through the mud. There were just some elements that rubbed me the wrong way. All in all, I enjoyed this book a lot and it’s probably one of my favorites out of the books we read together.