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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Still think your vote is meaningless? Read this and think again!, 16 May 2007
Four years ago a City was hit by a plague of blindness. It was contagious and there was no cure. Before long the entire population was blind and the City descended into savagery. But one woman retained her sight, leading her friends to survival. Through it all she had to watch as the savage and horrific events unfolded. But then, as quickly as it started, the blindness began to ease, people regained their sight and everything returned to normal.
This was the plot of the startlingly original and thoroughly terrifying novel from Portuguese Nobel Prize winning author Jose Saramago. `Blindness' was a pleasure to read, as is `Seeing'.
We are now four years later and it is election day. But when the results are announced the government is devastated to discover that over 70% of the votes cast are blank. Not spoiled, not abstained, just blank. They hastily call a new election but the results only get worse, now over 83% have cast blank votes. The Government panics, indignantly struggling to contain what they see as a strike at the very heart of democracy. But there is no sign of where this conspiracy has come from, no sign of what criminal mastermind is behind it all. They declare a state of emergency and blockade the City, to teach the people a lesson about democratic responsibility.
Just as in `Blindness' the premise behind this novel is absolutely fantastic. There are few books which are as timely or whose satire is as incisive and funny. The portrayal of a pseudo-dictatorial democratic government dogmatically using every dirty trick in the book to dissuade the populace from dissent is disturbingly believable. It is impossible not to be inspired by the opportunity for political dissent that such a mass tactic would provide, is impossible not to dream of such unity of hearts and minds. The subtlety of the author allows him to write the entire book from the perspective of the authorities whist, at the same time, lambasting their all too believable policies.
The prose style is dense and Saramago's archetypal style makes for an often difficult read. This is a book to read feverishly in a couple of days because it can be difficult to pick up and put down. Also the narrative distance that Saramago affords his characters means they are difficult to connect with and there is little emotional centre to associate with. Instead this is a fearsomely intelligent tour de force in which Saramago questions how we can live so passively in a world like ours.
And the question remains: what or who has led the populace to act in this divisive way? Or could it be that the City is suffering once more from an infectious plague, this time making people see more than any disparate group ever could. Perhaps I read too much into the ending of this book, but if not then `Seeing' has one of the most brilliantly conceived plots of any book I have ever read.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
You should go blind before you see..., 27 Sep 2006
A sequel of sorts to Blindness, I would recommend you read that book first, as, while not vital to the plot's enjoyment, it certainly embellishes the sparsely illustrated back story and gives a clearer idea of just how bad things got four years previous to (and referenced throughout) this novel's chronology.
Saramago is a challenging writer; his insistence upon endless prose with little to no puntuation, and a refusal to give names to characters, let alone use the conventions of paragraphs and speech marks for dialogues, all add up to a slower, more arduous read - but perhaps a more detailed and careful one for that.
The story is as outlined, but I would say that I disagree with the other reviewer, insomuch that I felt the second half was plot driven as the first, rather it becomes a slightly different plot - an investigation. The story moves from macro-study to micro-study, but throughout, as with Blindness, concerns itself with the paranoia of power and the desperate, despicable methods invoked to maintain power and control.
Personally, I enjoyed Seeing more than Blindness, but that is mainly because Blindess is a far more harrowing read, not that Seeing is the better novel. Seeing shows us the folly and weakness of those in power - something one can examine with a degree of (powerless?) complacency; Blindness holds a bleached mirror up to each and every one of us and terrifies.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Let's howl, said the dog, 20 Jun 2006
This is a terrifyingly subtle book. It is a direct follow on from Blindness and contains a lot less action and a lot less farcical comedy (at one point Raymond Chandler and Humphrey Bogart are evoked - collars up, hat brims down). While the first half of the book is very plot driven, much of this plot is already revealed on the dust jacket and so the effect is somewhat lessened; the second half of the book is much slower and far more ambiguous. As a result of this style, you will find yourself worried about what you have just read: you will know you believe in it but you will not know what it is. You will be asked to have faith that your beliefs will develop for the better - not the worse.
Much of the second half did seem a little uneventful but, as it says on page 287, "I'll pray that the readers do read the article through to the end". `Blindness' should be read first, since you really should read both before ending your days and reading Seeing first would probably spoil the drama of Blindness.
The story opens with the words:
Let's howl, said the dog
- The Book of Voices
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