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mayassem's review against another edition
5.0
One of the best novels I've ever read. Emotionally draining. Utterly depressing. But in the end there's always hope. I'm grateful for the ending.
soothedbyrainfall's review against another edition
4.0
As a fan of post apocalyptic fiction, this was right up my alley. The somewhat stream-of-consciousness writing style is a bit off putting at first but the story really pulls you in. Very bad things happen in this book, but ultimately it ends on a hopeful note.
josieowens's review against another edition
4.0
A hard but important read during this time in US history. Blindness involves a pandemic where the world (we don't know where) is quickly going blind. Then the political and social fallout occurs. What happens to our humanity? Who is family? What would you do to protect others? Saramago has an interesting structure and style. I enjoyed this novel although there were times that I skim read because I wanted to get to the plot and know what was going to happen. I think it would be a good book to reread in order to appreciate the prose, motifs, and symbolism more deeply.
rossetto_e_guai's review against another edition
4.0
Come si può scrivere una recensione di un nobel alla letteratura ? Diciamo che la storia la conosciamo tutti ma il vero motivo per cui bisogna leggere questo romanzo è per quello che si prova leggendolo. Questo romanzo è indubbiamente un pugno nello stomaco.
Lo stile di scrittura di Saramago può piacere o meno, io ho adorato il non precisare il luogo degli avvenimenti e la mancanza di nomi propri, sopportato le intere pagine con poca o assente punteggiatura e detestato le frasi pseudo filosofiche messe in bocca a persone del tutto comuni che in condizioni disastrose come
Quelle raccontate non credo che si sarebbero messe a filosofeggiare sul concetto di cecità. Insomma
Certe considerazioni o vengono fatte da un narratore esterno ed onnisciente o personalmente credo sia meglio lasciarle fare al lettore.
Lo stile di scrittura di Saramago può piacere o meno, io ho adorato il non precisare il luogo degli avvenimenti e la mancanza di nomi propri, sopportato le intere pagine con poca o assente punteggiatura e detestato le frasi pseudo filosofiche messe in bocca a persone del tutto comuni che in condizioni disastrose come
Quelle raccontate non credo che si sarebbero messe a filosofeggiare sul concetto di cecità. Insomma
Certe considerazioni o vengono fatte da un narratore esterno ed onnisciente o personalmente credo sia meglio lasciarle fare al lettore.
pris_asagiri's review against another edition
3.0
On writing technique, I give this book 4 stars, but for overall story content, I give it only 3 for two reasons:
1. I was outraged that he wrote the Doctor's Wife (DW) as a strong, intelligent, self-sufficient women who meekly and cowardly allowed not just herself but her fellow female "inmates" to be raped and sodomized and tortured when she had an opportunity to change things. That Saramago had her kill him after the fact was nauseating to me because it felt so untrue to how he had written her up to that point. I am not outraged there was rape (I'm actually surprised it didn't come up sooner). I'm not outraged that she was raped. I'm not advocating murder either. But she had an opportunity to take away the leader's main weapon (the gun) and stop the rest of the women from being tortured like this. And she didn't.
2. The ending. It was such a let down. He wrote such a powerful story and to have it end on such a whimper, I was just disappointed. It was gripping until I knew the first blind man could see. Then the rest of the book was completely predictable.
But this should be a book that should make your "modern classics" list. It's powerful and raw and speaks deeply on humanity and what makes us human. I felt it always had a tinge of truth even in its most ridiculousness of scenarios. But human beings--being what we are--are ridiculous.
The writing style was perfect for the story. I felt it conveyed the emotion and panic throughout the whole story. It was a little hard to get used to at first but once you found the rhythm of it, I could almost hear it in my head.
All-in-all, I'm grateful I had the opportunity to read this.
1. I was outraged that he wrote the Doctor's Wife (DW) as a strong, intelligent, self-sufficient women who meekly and cowardly allowed not just herself but her fellow female "inmates" to be raped and sodomized and tortured when she had an opportunity to change things. That Saramago had her kill him after the fact was nauseating to me because it felt so untrue to how he had written her up to that point. I am not outraged there was rape (I'm actually surprised it didn't come up sooner). I'm not outraged that she was raped. I'm not advocating murder either. But she had an opportunity to take away the leader's main weapon (the gun) and stop the rest of the women from being tortured like this. And she didn't.
2. The ending. It was such a let down. He wrote such a powerful story and to have it end on such a whimper, I was just disappointed. It was gripping until I knew the first blind man could see. Then the rest of the book was completely predictable.
But this should be a book that should make your "modern classics" list. It's powerful and raw and speaks deeply on humanity and what makes us human. I felt it always had a tinge of truth even in its most ridiculousness of scenarios. But human beings--being what we are--are ridiculous.
The writing style was perfect for the story. I felt it conveyed the emotion and panic throughout the whole story. It was a little hard to get used to at first but once you found the rhythm of it, I could almost hear it in my head.
All-in-all, I'm grateful I had the opportunity to read this.
rick_williams's review against another edition
5.0
This is a disturbing and thought provoking book which investigates what it is that truly makes us human, what it is that is left when almost everything is stripped away. The writing style, with little in the way of punctuation, creates a sense of confusion and ambiguity in the mind of the reader that reflects and enhances the situation of the characters, several of whom are unnamed. There are moments of despair and revulsion, but also of hope and beauty in this allegorical multi-layered tale. A very impressive work indeed.
tmaltman's review against another edition
4.0
"I think we are blind, Blind but seeing. Blind people who can see, but do not see."
Jose Saramago's Blindness is a great book, an apocalyptic parable about what might happen were a plague of blindness to spread throughout the world. The central characters pass unnamed through the pages, including a Dog of Tears and a Girl with Dark Glasses. The Doctor's Wife alone retains her vision and bears witness to a series of horrors and degradations as she tries to guide a small band safely in a time of madness.
All of this makes for an enthralling read, reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, except for one thing.
Jose Saramago chooses the most irritating style imaginable to portray events. There are few paragraphs in this book. There are no paragraphs for dialogue breaks, nothing but dense walls of information. All too often an omniscient narrator hovers over scenes, musing on the horrors in a detached philosophical voice.
I know. I know. He won the Nobel Prize. When you win the Nobel prize you can do fancy stuff with style. The dense paragraphs are meant to create a sensation of impenetrable blindness in the reader, too, one might argue. And that's fine, but if it's all the same it makes for a difficult reading experience and while I love to be challenged by my books, I must admit to turning to literature for pleasure.
I was captivated here by the story, but not by the style.
Jose Saramago's Blindness is a great book, an apocalyptic parable about what might happen were a plague of blindness to spread throughout the world. The central characters pass unnamed through the pages, including a Dog of Tears and a Girl with Dark Glasses. The Doctor's Wife alone retains her vision and bears witness to a series of horrors and degradations as she tries to guide a small band safely in a time of madness.
All of this makes for an enthralling read, reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, except for one thing.
Jose Saramago chooses the most irritating style imaginable to portray events. There are few paragraphs in this book. There are no paragraphs for dialogue breaks, nothing but dense walls of information. All too often an omniscient narrator hovers over scenes, musing on the horrors in a detached philosophical voice.
I know. I know. He won the Nobel Prize. When you win the Nobel prize you can do fancy stuff with style. The dense paragraphs are meant to create a sensation of impenetrable blindness in the reader, too, one might argue. And that's fine, but if it's all the same it makes for a difficult reading experience and while I love to be challenged by my books, I must admit to turning to literature for pleasure.
I was captivated here by the story, but not by the style.
pixiebix's review against another edition
3.0
Bang-on three stars, for a grotesque and horrifying story (a win) that was executed in a way I really, really did not get along with (a loss).
I am not sure whether this is the case across all editions of Blindness (I would guess it is), but my paperback was formatted in a way that really pulled me out of the story and got my eyes and brain hurting, big time. A new paragraph started maybe once every 1.5 pages on average, the typeface was rather small (a bad combo), commas oftentimes replaced full stops (presumably to create a scattered or claustrophobic feel), and there was not a speech mark in sight. Dialogue all took place in the same paragraph, separated by commas, a new speaker being marked by a capital letter. (The commas and caps are obviously unhelpful indicators when one speaker's sentence may include multiple commas, and when the following speaker's sentence starts with 'I', which would always be capitalised no matter what.) I understand and respect the intention behind these choices, but my God, it really sabotaged the reading experience for me, to the point where I had to assign myself the task of a chapter a day so I'd actually finish the thing (even though everything else about it was fantastic).
Formatting/storytelling gripes aside: this book is seriously scary. And deeply sad and nauseating and demoralising. It caught me off guard in every way. In other words, it was a true dystopian. I even don't think it would be inaccurate to class it as a horror. The premise alone is unsettling, and the deeper you go, the worse it gets. The human suffering involved is not described in casual or cliched terms; it does not flinch away from talking about the grossest or most dehumanising aspects of chaos and human nature. Saramago took this idea and unpacked it to the bottom, and what we are left with is a festering pile of nightmare fuel.
If you're an audiobook person, listen to the audiobook. I've not even done that, but I know for sure it would be the better choice. In that format, this book would be far better than my paltry three stars.
I am not sure whether this is the case across all editions of Blindness (I would guess it is), but my paperback was formatted in a way that really pulled me out of the story and got my eyes and brain hurting, big time. A new paragraph started maybe once every 1.5 pages on average, the typeface was rather small (a bad combo), commas oftentimes replaced full stops (presumably to create a scattered or claustrophobic feel), and there was not a speech mark in sight. Dialogue all took place in the same paragraph, separated by commas, a new speaker being marked by a capital letter. (The commas and caps are obviously unhelpful indicators when one speaker's sentence may include multiple commas, and when the following speaker's sentence starts with 'I', which would always be capitalised no matter what.) I understand and respect the intention behind these choices, but my God, it really sabotaged the reading experience for me, to the point where I had to assign myself the task of a chapter a day so I'd actually finish the thing (even though everything else about it was fantastic).
Formatting/storytelling gripes aside: this book is seriously scary. And deeply sad and nauseating and demoralising. It caught me off guard in every way. In other words, it was a true dystopian. I even don't think it would be inaccurate to class it as a horror. The premise alone is unsettling, and the deeper you go, the worse it gets. The human suffering involved is not described in casual or cliched terms; it does not flinch away from talking about the grossest or most dehumanising aspects of chaos and human nature. Saramago took this idea and unpacked it to the bottom, and what we are left with is a festering pile of nightmare fuel.
If you're an audiobook person, listen to the audiobook. I've not even done that, but I know for sure it would be the better choice. In that format, this book would be far better than my paltry three stars.
cpaknit's review against another edition
4.0
A haunting and thought provoking book, written in the usual Saramago style.
duckaduck's review against another edition
2.0
Tough read. The writing style is very one-note so it's hard to stay with it. The removal of punctuation is hard going though it's certainly easier in places. It made the boom much more of a chore than it needed to be as it was just relentlessly passive and it really took away from the feeling for the characters.
I being set in the hospital for part of it wasn't particularly well done and felt like a stupid horror film.
Clearly a great premise and some huge ideas in there about humanity and what we become when we lose so much of what we've built our lives around.
I being set in the hospital for part of it wasn't particularly well done and felt like a stupid horror film.
Clearly a great premise and some huge ideas in there about humanity and what we become when we lose so much of what we've built our lives around.