The appeal of Marquez has always, for me, been his characters. Every character in his books not only has a fully realized inner life, but also a magical reality that could serve as the subject of its own novel. In Cholera, for example, not only are the three central characters vibrant and heightened to the point where their humanity is recognizable, but not taken for granted; even those with barely a sentence of mention, down to the pets, are so real in their magicality that one's skepticism is never triggered. We know people in our real lives who similarly skirt the margins of what seems possible, and it is no surprise at all to find them in a novel.
What makes this world magically real, as opposed to simply real, is not the nature of its denizens, but rather the quantity of them. It is no surprise to meet characters who bend credibility; it is a surprise that each and every one of them do. This trait could be seen as a forebear of modern day heightened realities such as one sees in 30 Rock, Kimmy Schmidt, or Always Sunny in Philadelphia. We are used to knowing such magical/heightened people; we simply aren't used to being surrounded by them.
I especially enjoy these worlds, the magical and heightened realities of literature, because their distorted reflection of experienced reality is the other side of my personal looking glass. Reading and being immersed in the world of Cholera gives me an idea what it must be like for an outsider to experience the world of my friends and me. Each and every one of us is vaguely magical, of the sort that it is not uncommon to meet on occasion, but overwhelming to meet all at once.
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