Another book made into a disappointing film -- and, like "Children of Men," also features Julianne Moore. I'm sure that's coincidental. The problem with both is the poor adaptation.
José Saramago won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998. This book, written in 1995, was translated from its original Portuguese, but I would not suppose, from how well the storytelling flowed and the gorgeous language used, that it lost anything through its translation.
Actually, I listened to the audiobook, and I am somewhat regretting it. The narrative performance was excellent, but then I read this on Wikipedia:
Like most works by Saramago, the novel contains many long, breathless sentences in which commas take the place of periods. The lack of quotation marks around dialogue means that the speakers' identities (or the fact that dialogue is occurring) may not be immediately apparent to the reader.
I missed it. The lack of punctuation, no quotation marks, something like Cormac McCarthy, I'm guessing, would add to the tone of the book. But in listening to it, there was no ambiguity about who was speaking or when. I missed out.
None of the characters are ever named. They are distinguished by short descriptions, such as "the doctor's wife" and "the girl with dark glasses." It took me about an hour to realize that this was the case, since all characters are so well distinguished that it wasn't apparent at first, and was not impersonal, that they all lacked names.
The dystopia occurs when the entire population becomes blind through a very contagious illness. At first the government tries to isolate the afflicted, but eventually none are spared and the government services break down completely. People must figure out new ways to survive, must procure food even though all are blind. Priorities shift and change. One person, who seems to be immune to the blindness, witnesses all the ugliness of the societal adjustments, the desperation and filth (since no one is running public services, toilets become hopelessly clogged, no one bathes or cleans anything, etc).
The Wikipedia article also mentions that the book received some condemnation for its negative portrayal of blind people. Hogwash. It's about humans, not about the blind. It shows very convincingly what happens if people are stripped of all etiquette (both the need and the ability to have any sense of decorum) and are reduced to scrounging for food to survive. There are deeply good and deeply bad aspects of people shown here.
"Blindness" gives no easy answers, doesn't pretend to be making a statement or preaching a point of view. Since I enjoyed "The Road" so much, I think it helped me appreciate this book a great deal as well. Society gone awry, excellent storytelling -- but in its utter bleakness, it's certainly not for everyone.
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