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Seeing
by Jose Saramago
The Portugese, Nobel Prize-winning author's latest satirical, fable-like novel is a sequel to his acclaimed work "Blindness." Set four years later, "Seeing" reveals what happens after national elections go awry when a majority of ballots are left blank.
Harcourt, 320 pages
04/10/2006
$25.00
ISBN: 0151012385
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
NOTES:
Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa.
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
The Guardian Ursula K Le Guin
Jose Saramago will be 84 this year. He has written a novel that says more about the days we are living in than any book I have read. He writes with wit, with heartbreaking dignity, and with the simplicity of a great artist in full control of his art. Let us listen to a true elder of our people, a man of tears, a man of wisdom.
Salon Sarah Goldstein
Saramago... is a deliberate, attentive writer; he knows exactly what his words mean, and all of them--despite what he may have thought more than a half-century ago--are completely worthwhile.
The Independent Julian Evans
Nothing I can remember reading tells me more, and with such arresting humour and simplicity, about the imposture of the times we live in.
Kirkus Reviews
Very nearly equal to the magnificent Blindness: another invaluable gift from a matchless writer.
Sydney Morning Herald Andrew Riemer
Many people will be offended, I think, by what Saramago has to say about our world. More, I hope, will find this black fable irresistible.
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Tim Souster
This provocative and sometimes frustrating book is not purely political; it is odder than any shout of anguish.
Washington Post Gustavo Perez Firmat
Although Saramago's dense, garrulous prose -- masterfully rendered in Margaret Jull Costa's translation -- may not be to everyone's taste, the clarity and compassion of his vision make Seeing worthy of its name and its author.
Library Journal Jack Shreve
Saramago's clear eye for acknowledging things as they are barrages us with valuable insights suggesting that the dynamics of human governance are not as rational as we like to think. [1 Apr 2006, p. 82]
The New Yorker
Initially, readers may miss the previous novel’s intensity of feeling, but this one’s lightness proves deceptive.
Boston Globe Julia Ramey
The satisfaction of a Saramago novel, like that of life itself, is rarely a resolution to its central drama; it is the people and moments one enjoys along the way.
Chicago Tribune Jack Fuller
[Jose Saramago]'s writing style can be off-putting at first, with run-on sentences that sometimes encompass all parts of a dialogue (with nary a quotation mark), parenthetical asides, overblown philosophical digressions and self-consciousness. But give it a chance. The stylistic idiosyncrasies fade as you get used to Saramago's rhythm and the odd quirks of the narrator, including his at-times-painful use of cliches. In effect, everything about this novel is postmodern, except its acute observation of human reality.
Los Angeles Times Art Winslow
Though Saramago's allegory fits in a loose tradition of works from writers such as Coetzee and Orwell, it is heavily laced with humor as well, a lampoon reminiscent of politicized and slightly surreal tales as woven by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare and the Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano. [9 Apr2006]
Slate Michael Wood
The tone of the work is strange; a kind of domesticated alienation effect, Brecht made bureaucratic. But the irony is too firm and funny, and the characters too engaged with their fates and those of others, for the work to feel abstract as we read it.
The New York Times Book Review Terrence Rafferty
[Saramago] ends up with a much better book than he seems to have started out to write, but in the end "Seeing" is merely a sequel to a popular work--the sort of product that gives movie producers a bad name and does not generally win points for wisdom.
New York Observer Chris Lehmann
At times, it gets away from him, and he succumbs to metafiction gimmicks like commenting on gaps in the narrative’s chronology and plausibility. But Seeing nonetheless builds into a compelling saga of state intrigue [24 Apr2006]
Daily Telegraph
[Seeing is] a rather basic novel, and seems casually done, and it's thoroughly Portuguese, but it does catch the universal human note.
Publishers Weekly
The allegorical blindness/sight framework is weak and obvious, and Saramago's capital city sometimes reminds one of Dr. Seuss's Whoville. Yet it works.
Entertainment Weekly Troy Patterson
There may be a political allegory in there somewhere, but the Portuguese Nobel winner's storytelling is so hazy that it's hard to see the point.
 The average user rating for this book is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
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