Rating: 
Summary: We are all blind.
Review: I received this book for my 18th birthday, and I was immediately puzzled by its title. "Blindness," I wondered? However, upon reading the first page, I became drawn into the novel. Upon first glance, one will notice right away that the author uses no punctuation. This suits the story appropriately, however, because it keeps the story flowing. I finished the book in a course of a week while balancing schoolwork because I could not put it down. I found the plot to be believable, and I enjoyed the life lessons that Saramago wove throughout. I can see why this book won the Novel Prize for literature, for it is one that transcends language, gender, wealth, class, or race. This novel is one that all humans will be able to connect to-- for it deals with basic human characteristics like greed, hunger, generosity, and compassion-- and it is one that all humans will grow to enjoy. The book did remind me of William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," but this time the story focused on everyone-- for among the blind people were a child, young girl, adult, old man, and dog-- and all professions-- a prostitute, doctor, thief, etc. An amazing and one-of-a-kind read. One of my favorite books, along with Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment."
Rating: 
Summary: Puzzling, but for no objective reason.
Review: Jose Saramago, Blindness (Harcourt Brace, 1995) Over the years since its publication, Blindness has been hailed as a modern classic and made more ten-best lists than anyone not a CPA is going to be willing to count. And I guess I can understand why, but I was far less impressed with the book than most. To be fair, that's probably because I'm more of a stickler for grammar. It's obvious that Saramago has a distinctive style in his writing, and one that caused people to latch onto this book in amazing numbers. But a big part of that style is run-on sentences, some of which last a whole paragraph (and some paragraphs in this book last more than a page). It's maddening. I also couldn't help comparing the style of writing, and always unfavorably, to that of Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy also has a distinctive style about his prose, and it's as clipped and rhythmic as Saramago's is lengthy and free-flowing. Which a reader will prefer is likely a matter of taste; I fall on the clipped and rhythmic side of the fence. The story is a political allegory about an unspecified modern city where the residents (at least, the ones we see throughout) have been struck blind. (One wonders if Saramago is aware of Joe Frank's 1991 radio play Rent a Family, in which Arthur Miller spins such a scenario during a monologue.) Saramago weaves with a deft hand, and the messages under the surface never get to the point of hitting the reader over the head with a hammer. This is a refreshing change from most political fiction, even if, in order to do so, Saramago spends what seems an inordinate amount of tie avoiding the political by immersing his characters in the scatological. (There is more talk of human excrement in this book than in, perhaps, anything written in the twentieth century outside medical journals and certain sexual fetish novels.) Again, this is a personal thing, but I found myself quailing at the turn of every page, wondering how many of the words would have been better printed in brown. So many conflicts about this novel, and all of them of a personal nature. I have no choice but to give it a straight middle-of-the-road ** ½ and come back to it at a later time. There is much here to be explored, but I didn't see it as the be-all and end-all of Portugese literature that some have heralded it.
Rating: 
Summary: Okay I get it there is poo everywhere
Review: This book drags quite a bit. Yes it has some great symbolism and yes ther is a deeper meaning, but seriously I got sick of hearing about how everyone is covered in poo. Worse yet, nothing really happens. I realize it is a book about ideas but it would be nice if there were more than three events. I konw he won the Nobel prize but if I were you I'd skip this one and read something by Dickens a real master.
Rating: 
Summary: Blind to grammar
Review: I have not read this book. So by no means should you take my review seriously. However I was unable to get past the first page of Blindness. The sentence structure was so irksome I couldn't conceive of reading a whole book written in that style. There were so many run-on sentences on that page I thought the use of periods had been lost in the translation. I know it's meant to lend a sense of surreal unsease, I know it's stream-of-consciousness. I just couldn't handle it. So keep my warning in mind if you're thinking of buying this for the book editor in your life. It'll drive them mad.
Rating:
Summary: haunting, harrowing, hopeful--Kafka meets Marquez
Review: Sorry gang, but I've got throw in with the five-starrers on this one. I originally read this book when it first came out, and I can still remember, well, not so much particular scenes as the atmosphere, the harrowing ambiance, and Saramogo's utter mastery of a tone that so often threatens to lurch over onto itself, but never quite does (yes, the sentences are long, but the words are simple). This book has really stuck to my ribs as no other I've read since has. I found the nameless characters richly drawn, and their ordeals believeable (almost logical in an awful way). Saramago is walking a real high wire by combining a (seemingly) simple allegory with his loping sentence style, but fans of writers like Kafka or Garcia Marquez will not be disappointed, will in fact be elated to be invited into such a richly concieved, harrowing, but finally humane world. I will read this book several times, and recommend it without reservation. I cannot understand what those who gripe at the Nobel Committee are thinking in this case--Nicholas Sparks for laureate, maybe?
Rating:
Summary: A Haunting Masterpiece
Review: People have on occasion posed the question to me that if I absolutely had to choose, would I rather be deaf or blind. While being deaf must be awful, nothing to me could be more horrible that being incapable of experiencing the world around me, not being able to read a book or to enjoy the movies, to be shut off from beauty, to be suddenly helpless and totally dependent on others. This is the world that Jose Saramago creates in _Blindness_, a stunning, haunting, and often horrifying work where everyone eventually goes blind, seemingly from some sort of contagion of unknown origin. Everything that was formerly working and that everyone took for granted (e.g. electricity) grinds to a halt. The book contains scenes of unspeakable images. While reading _Blindness_ I could not help thinking of the horror classic, "Night of the Living Dead," where the dead aimlessly wander around preying on the fearful living. In _Blindness_ it is the blind, however, who are the victims, warehoused in an ever-crowding mental asylum where various horrors are committed by the guards and even by some of the blind. There is no act of degradation that will not be committed on others when food becomes virtually non-existent. Saramago does a very simple and wonderfully descriptive thing: rather than give his characters names, he matter of factly calls them the doctor, the doctor's wife, the first blind man and his wife, the girl with the dark glasses, the old man with the black eyepatch and the boy with the squint. The doctor's wife is the only character who amazingly retains her sight. She selflessly acts as the eyes for the rest of the characters in the book. Then there is the dog of tears, who acts as the comforter and protector of the doctor's wife. While reading this magnificent and very disturbing book, I often felt the urge to stop people on the street and beg them to purchase and to read this book. I can think of no higher praise for a work of literature.
Rating:
Summary: a few random thoughts
Review: In book 7 of Plato's Republic, Socrates uses the metaphor of the cave to illuminate the soul's journey into light, and the necessary journey back into the cave. At the end of Blindness, when the doctor's wife mistakes light for the onset of blindness, I felt a frisson of freezing breeze at the nape of my neck. We who see and do nothing - are we really any better? This book, worthy of a Nobelist, contains a chilling condemnation of our weakness. And it's not for the squeamish.
Rating: 
Summary: Painful but Worthwhile Reading
Review: "Blindness" is a gut-wrenching, draining read, but it is worth every bit of time spent, every wince at painful details. The plot is fairly simple: a mysterious, trasmittable disease that causes blindness suddenly appears in a city. It spreads quickly, and the authorities attempt to stop it by placing a quarantine on the initial cases and those who had contact with them. Society is understandably paranoid about the cases, and there is some hysteria. The novel follows a small group of the initial cases as they go blind and then deal with that blindness. In a sense, the novel is like a work of science fiction in that it lays out a premise (contagious blindness plagues a city) and then follows it logically. The difference between this novel and most works of science fiction is the ruthlessness with which Saramago follows his premise. The "society" that evolves among the blind in quarantine is savage, though it isn't clear that it's much better on the outside. Conditions quickly degenerate into unimaginable horror--dirt, illness, human waste, human cruelty all multiply as quickly as the cases of violence. Saramago adopts a very spare prose style with a matter of fact tone to describe the conditions. It would have been easy for his narratorial voice to get emotionally involved in the plight of the characters, but by resisting that temptation, he has made the novel all the more powerful. Similarly, by leaving the characters and location nameless, he allows the novel a more universal feel and yet allows the characters to distinguish themselves through their responses (rather than their backgrounds). There are times when the narrative voice takes on a "post-modernist" point of view (questioning how it could know certain things, etc.) which I did not think were necessary, though they didn't detract from the novel. Based solely on this work, it is little wonder that Saramago has such a good international reputation; if he has other works of this quality, one would have to include him among the best writers of the 20th century.
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Summary: Blindness closer to Indecent Proposal than Lord of the Flies
Review: First and most importantly, this is a book that you will definitely want to read. Put aside mine and the plethora of other commentaries, and get the book. The reason is simple, the book is full of the stuff that gets you thinking - not about such haughty concepts as space, time, or quantum science, but about human nature. In that sense the book is reminiscent of the movie 'Indecent Proposal'. The movie in itself was not entirely good or believable, but it got people thinking. My first impression of the book was 'Lord of the Flies' for adults. Yet while as a youth I actually could visualize a Lord of the Flies take place, the situation developed by Saramago was far from tenable. The believability of the plot suffers as a result of the author's concentration on providing a certain commentary. Lest I receive criticism, I want to be specific. It is not the plague I find unrealistic. Clearly it was meant to be, and 'blindness' could have been replaced by any other plague or disaster which robs us of a fundamental basis on which our orderly lives are founded. It is the characters and their actions that fall out of the realm of 'believable' even if you have a horribly cynical view of humanity (as I sometimes do). The author clearly overstepped his limits here. In attempting to provide a commentary on human nature, he developed a social structure that would be very unlikely to occur. I don't want to spoil the plot, but the events and reactions that occur are very unbelievable. His choice of 'blindness' as a plague also leaves the reader with a bad taste in his mouth. Anyone who has had more than a few minutes in total darkness will find the author's pov quite insulting. So while this book fails to yield an accurate portrait of humanity in dire straits, it does perhaps make a good Picasso. There is enough here to feed the thoughts and imaginations of readers. It is also one of those books that will appeal to both deep thinkers and simple reading enthusiasts. So to repeat my advice. BUY THE BOOK, READ THE BOOK, just try to dismiss the shortcomings of the characters/text and focus on the message.
Rating:
Summary: Opening our lives with blindness
Review: Blindness
By Jose Saramago
Reviewed by Darcie D'Augusta The novel Blindness tells the story of what happens to society when an epidemic of blindness begins to spread across the country. This novel should and can be read by all. In fact its purpose is to make people be 'blind' to our differences. It is overall a well written, eye-opener for mankind as a whole. None of the characters in this story have a name. They are referred as to what they are. For example, the first person to be infected by the epidemic is called, the first blind man, through out the novel. The heroine of the novel is the doctor's wife. She is the only known person to not lose her eyesight. Although, at first she keeps her sight secret to all except her husband, she eventually becomes the crutch for all of the impaired people around her. She is the set of eyes that helps them take care of themselves as much as possible, from finding them food to ending the brutal raping orgies that the women must endure to survive. Although she is tired and worn-out she stays with her friends and helps them until they all overcome their blindness in the end. One feature of this book that is disliked is the fact that there are no quotes used throughout the novel. Although, it might be confusing, it actually holds symbolic meaning relating to the novel. The people that are blind cannot use their eyesight in order to figure out who is speaking. They must identify each person by the tone, style, and dialect of each person speaking. The reader must also do this to differentiate between speakers. This makes the reader more involved in the novel. 'I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.' This final statement sums up exactly what Saramago is trying to say. That people today are blind when it comes to knowing people and life as it is on the inside and not what is first viewed. This 'white blindness' was an awakening to mankind. To give people more 'sight' then any pair of eyes could give. Overall, I enjoyed this book. It grasped by attention because the story was different and held a lot of symbolic meaning at the same time. Although, sometimes Saramago will tend to go off on endless tangents about insightful thoughts on blindness, I learned to see past them and enjoy the book. In conclusion, I recommend this novel to almost anyone. I think every person belonging to the human race has been blinded from knowledge that is concealed by our own eyes. This book, although not as affective as having the epidemic of 'white blindness', will open your mind to what the world really is.
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