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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
The theme of shared identity, treated by such masters as Poe, Stevenson, and Dostoevsky, animates the 1998 Nobel winner's latest.
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Outstanding
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The Independent Amanda Hopkinson
The Double is Saramago at his most practised and polished. It is philosophy and thriller rolled into one with - as ever - a tight cast of characters.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Richard Eder
It is Mr. Saramago's idiosyncratic post-Marxist dialectic: materialist but only as a way to ground the soul
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Christine Thomas
[O]ne ... must wade through the long digressions to reach the climax and be willing to be immersed in the anonymous city Saramago has designed -- where women are weak, hysterical objects, men are controlled by trying to be manly and society's imposed order eliminates creativity -- through to the book's seemingly effortless, neat and inevitable conclusion.
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Favorable
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Lee Henderson
The Double is Saramago's most suspenseful story since Blindness , and is, strangely, his most optimistic as well. [6 Nov. 2004, D5]
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Favorable
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The New Yorker John Updike
The novel, with its farcical elements, does not quite deepen into the dizzying vortex of identity issues that may have been intended; it remains more comic than not, and lacks the unforced momentum and resonance of "œBlindness."
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Favorable
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London Review Of Books Daniel Soar
If it were possible to treat his novels independently, you would have to say that The Double isn't Saramago's best; but that would be true only because its limitations are consequences of its premise.
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Favorable
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Los Angeles Times Merle Rubin
"The Double" begins by intriguing us, proceeds to entertain, charm and engage, and ultimately manages to disturb. [4 Oct. 2004, E9]
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Favorable
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Booklist Brad Hooper
[A] cerebral yet shockingly personal exploration of what truly makes an individual unique and the concept that somewhere in the world it's possible that one's exact physical double exists. [1 Sept. 2004, p. 7]
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Scott W. Helman
He may have written deeper and more profound satires, but "The Double" succeeds in probing that human core we think we know until a master artist forces us to reconsider.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Julian Evans
[T]his novel, as much as the previous novels of this morally well-weathered and uniquely seductive writer, is not only a contemplation of what one might call the art of the impossible, but a lyrical foretaste of the future.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Max Davidson
The Double is a brilliantly ingenious story, simple in conception, but developed with real aplomb. It is like Kafka with jokes.
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Favorable
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Entertainment Weekly Gregory Kirschling
Saramago might've dug deeper into the premise than he ultimately does, but a last little twist, delivered in a final paragraph of a mere two pages, is delicious.
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Mixed
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Library Journal Mark Kloszewski
Too ponderous for the average reader and lacking the intrigue that the premise implies, this will appeal mainly to fans of the Nobel-winning author.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review John Banville
If Saramago believes what he has his omniscient narrator declare -- that ''every ordinary person is unique, truly unique'' -- he might have devoted some writerly energy to making his characters more lifelike. Even doubles will be different in their hearts.
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Unfavorable
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The Guardian Alberto Manguel
In The Double, the writer appears less willing, more inclined to know better than his characters who they are and what they should do, and stubbornly refuses to explore with them the hidden, murky corners to which they so obviously lead him. The loss, of course, is the reader's.
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Unfavorable
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Washington Post Jonathan Carroll
Throughout The Double there is an obvious archness, an authorial sneer at the fantastical subject matter that quickly distances the reader from any emotional involvement with either the character or his situation.
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Unfavorable
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Publishers Weekly
This semi-allegory is certainly not one of Saramago's more noteworthy offerings.
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