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Review title: Oh, Saramago...
Product review: Any decent editor would be appalled by the literary style of this book, if one can even call it a style. The narrative flips back and forth between past and present tense, the characters remain nameless (the main character is simply called "the doctor's wife," others go by "the girl with the dark glasses," or "the wife of the first blind man"). Dialogue lacks quotation marks and is interlaced with the author's narrative, separated by commas, often making it impossible to determine who said what to whom. Other reviewers have commented that this is all Saramago's way of "blinding" the reader and immersing one in the story, but I have a simpler explanation: the only punctuation marks Saramago learned in school were the comma, period, and apostrophe.But even if you were to penetrate the broken prose, the plot is weak, ridden with filth, gore, lust, rape, and excrement.My recommendation for those considering this book is to look away and save time and money for some actual literature.
