A review by leilatre
All the Names, by José Saramago

5.0

I started reading Jose Saramego’s non-fiction book about Portugal in advance of a trip there this summer and I found his writings style, with its offbeat ideas and interesting tangents, so interesting that I decided that I needed to read some of his fiction. Then I was in Livaria Lello in Porto and I came across this little book about an odd quiet civil servant everyman and the adventuresthat he created for himself and I knew I needed to read it. The style can be tiring to follow, with never-ending paragraphs and long, rambling sentences, but the way he captured the overall frailty of life and the abject loneliness that everyone has felt from time to time was masterful. Parts had me laughing aloud at the absurdity and parts had me rereading the same sentence many times trying to parse his thoughts, but it was never boring. I’ll definitely read more Saramego.