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A review by jessrock
Seeing by José Saramago
2.0
I think everyone I interacted with in the month of November got to hear me complaining about this book, which falls squarely into the "why did I actually stick it out till the end?" category. I read Seeing because I enjoyed [b:Blindness|2526|Blindness (Blindness, #1)|José Saramago|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327866409s/2526.jpg|3213039] and this is advertised as a sequel, though it's actually only very loosely connected to the characters and events of that book.
Seeing is supposedly political satire, but satire is normally supposed to be funny, and this was just boring. Nothing happens for page after page after page. One election in an unnamed city, there is surprisingly high voter turnout, but the majority of the votes cast turn out to be blank. The government is so horrified that they pull out, leave the city secretly and wall it off so that no one else can get out. Even though they have withdrawn all police support, the people of the city are surprisingly well behaved. The government has many horrified meetings about how the citizens are not learning their lesson. That...about sums up the first 300 pages of a book that is barely over 300 pages.
The very end of the book gets interesting, when there are actual characters interacting with each other, and we see how this book ties in with Blindness. However, it's a serious case of too little, too late. Not recommended.
Seeing is supposedly political satire, but satire is normally supposed to be funny, and this was just boring. Nothing happens for page after page after page. One election in an unnamed city, there is surprisingly high voter turnout, but the majority of the votes cast turn out to be blank. The government is so horrified that they pull out, leave the city secretly and wall it off so that no one else can get out. Even though they have withdrawn all police support, the people of the city are surprisingly well behaved. The government has many horrified meetings about how the citizens are not learning their lesson. That...about sums up the first 300 pages of a book that is barely over 300 pages.
The very end of the book gets interesting, when there are actual characters interacting with each other, and we see how this book ties in with Blindness. However, it's a serious case of too little, too late. Not recommended.