It has been written, occasionally, that Gabriel García Márquez's writing owes much to surrealism. It might, but the thing is that it is not the writing that is surrealist, it is his subjects. Latin America is surrealist, García Márquez is its chronicler. The Colombian writer could be described more appropriately, and especially since publication of One hundred years of solitude and Autumn of the patriarch, as one of the Latin Caribbean's few real historians….

[In] Innocent Eréndira and other stories the same pattern, a chronicle of surrealism, is evident—and prepares the way for the great book. (p. 91)

The other stories in the book are shorter, none up to the standard of 'Eréndira'. They have the same style, showing the human being in his outrageous reality—where feelings have no logic other than that which arises from under the weight of heredity...