Blindness by Jose Saramago

Whew!  That was hard work.  Blindness by Jose Saramago is, for lack of a better term, a dense read.  It's one of those books where I can confidently say that I missed a great deal.

Saramago's style takes getting used to.  Dialogue is difficult to follow.  Plot is difficult to follow.  As a reader, you must concentrate on every word, on every line.  As I've stated earlier on this blog, I often read in the middle of the tumult of my house--kids playing, watching tv, talking on the phone.  One reason that Blindness took me so much time to finish is that I couldn't read this particular book in this tumult.  I had to find quiet which can be difficult to come by.  Plus, because reading the book was such hard work, I often couldn't get through as much at a sitting as I would have liked.

I cannot give this book a rating.  I do recommend this book if you want a powerful read.  As one commenter on this blog stated, "what was the point?"  Yes, the book is allegorical.  Of what, I'm not sure.  Blindness' value, to me, is that it has many layers and can mean many different things to different people.  As stated above, I'm sure I missed a lot, but I got a lot, too.  And all readers will find passages or plot points meaningful and powerful.

Blindness is definitely not a light read.  Nor is it an easy one.  I think that some books virtually read themselves.  The reader moves through them effortlessly.  Other books are work.  You have to fight through them--sometimes actually fight them.  Blindness is this type of book.  If you are ambitious enough to start Blindness, I urge you to finish it.  I'm not sure that you will find it a satisfying read, but Blindness will make you think between sittings and, I expect, long after finishing it.  That's about as good a definition as a good read as I can come up with.

Reading a book is better than a stick in the eye.