“Many years later, in front of the firing squad, colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon his father took him to see ice.”

The above quote is the opening line of Gabriel García Márquez‘s first novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. García Márquez’s death yesterday means an ending of sorts, but his work will continue to inspire, so it felt right to revisit a beginning. One Hundred Years of Solitude is my joint favourite book*; the subject of two fumbling, clumsy dissertations and consistent re-reading. It permeates everything I read, and everything I write.
My own first novel, The Cartographer’s Daughter, is at heart an adventure story, but magical realism snuck in at every turn. For me, it is the best way to make extraordinary things feel true, and to make truth feel extraordinary. It owes so much to García Márquez and his writing – a version of the ice incident seeped into my own pages – and I am very sad to know that my dream of running into him in a Colombian bar must finally be shelved. I feel like I’ve lost something in ways I can’t quite explain – Katya Kazbek puts it better than I can in her beautiful post here. I have already moved One Hundred Years of Solitude back to the top of my reading pile, its spine cracked, pages loose, story waiting.

*what it is joint with warrants a whole other post – to follow!