Final week of Love in the Time of Cholera

We are in the final week of Love in the Time of Cholera. I've been terribly busy with a new job and such, and very tired as well which I blame on the weather. I am, of course, very far behind, so one of my projects for today is to read read read.

How is everyone else doing? Mary completed the book back in February, but I know others are making slow progress, as am I.

Does anyone have a reaction at this point to magical realism as a writing style?

Is "Love in the time of Cholera" an example of that writing style? Some web sources suggest the parrot's ability to speak "with a clarity and rationality that were uncommon among human beings" is an example of introducing magical attributes next to mundane events, but I did not see that passage in the book as magical. I rather took it as a comment about the lack of clarity and rationality among human beings.

On the other hand, the parrot's repertoire does seem quite vast, including imitation of singing from what he hears on vinyl records, to latin Mass, sailors' curses, and who knows what else? Is the size of the parrot's repertoire magical?  Does the parrot's repertoire cover substantially all topics of "mundane" human speech?  Does the parrot's silence when the governor and his entourage visit imply the citizenry do not speak about politics (or to political leaders), possibly because such discussion is suppressed or dangerous?

Is the parrot's speech ability juxtaposed to human thoughts and speech intended to imply that humans are also merely repeating what is learned from repeated exposure rather than being creative or well reasoned? Here I am thinking particularly about religious beliefs and political ideology, which so frequently seems to me to be inherited from one's parents and social circumstance, rather than the product of enlightened reason. Is that what Garcia Marquez is conveying, when he juxtaposes the parrot's repetition against human clarity and rationality?

I invite others to share and discuss examples where "magical" elements are juxtaposed against "mundane" elements in the book.