We've got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you'll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)
(4) Base Camp
This is Gabriel Garcia Marquez on training wheels. Many of his novels are impenetrable to some readers because of the ornate language, sheer number of characters, and the way they travel through time more than Dr. Who does in his TARDIS. But Chronicle of a Death Foretold turns down the difficulty level so that we can all enjoy it.
We mean, this is still Marquez. Sometimes it's really easy to get lost and wonder if we are in the present, the past, seven years into the future, or 20 years into the future. There are tons of names, but at least everyone has a different name in this novel. (We're looking at you 100 Years of Solitude.) And instead of spanning generations, we have a very specific and short time period in which the main events occur.
So even though Chronicle of a Death Foretold isn't the easiest book to read, you can probably get through it without breaking too much of a sweat.