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A review by reasie
The Lives of Things by José Saramago
4.0
I forget who recommended this author to me but I'm so glad I've found him. He is clearly writing speculative fiction whether it is labelled as such or not, and is a master at elongating small moments into full stories. For example "The Chair" which is a full-length short story about the moment a man sits on a chair and a chair-leg breaks, complete with imaginings about the fantastical lives and personalities of the wood-worms in said leg.
The titular story, "Things" is a dense allegory where a bureaucratic state suffers sudden vanishings of things - mail boxes and coffee mugs at first and then whole walls and buildings until the people are left bereft of objects. The meaning in the text is never outright there, but signified in things like how the narrator constantly references acronyms for things. "The Government (G) was concerned about the disappearing objects, utensils, machines and installations (OUMIs)"
Another story I really liked in the collection is "The Centaur" which describes a centaur, referring always to this duality of his nature, as though man-part and horse-part are separate entities with their own thoughts on events.
The titular story, "Things" is a dense allegory where a bureaucratic state suffers sudden vanishings of things - mail boxes and coffee mugs at first and then whole walls and buildings until the people are left bereft of objects. The meaning in the text is never outright there, but signified in things like how the narrator constantly references acronyms for things. "The Government (G) was concerned about the disappearing objects, utensils, machines and installations (OUMIs)"
Another story I really liked in the collection is "The Centaur" which describes a centaur, referring always to this duality of his nature, as though man-part and horse-part are separate entities with their own thoughts on events.