All the Names

Rating:
Summary: Metaphor for human experience
Review: This book is not really a novel; the plot clearly secondary and tied together by bizarre coincidences that the author himself seems to poke fun at. Rather, it is like an extended allegory, in which everything from the gargantuan bureaucracy of the Central Registry where Senhor Jose works to the equally huge General Cemetery has metaphorical importance in Saramago's extended fable of modern life.

That fable is about a man striving to survive emotionally who as a hobby collects information on celebrities. One day, he decides to go in search of a random woman, and that is the key which energizes him and makes him human. The style is semi-stream-of-consciousness, and lots of ground is covered in conversations with the ceiling and casual elliptic asides that may not advance the story proper, but does cause one to reflect.

The ending, I found, did come on a bit strangely, and I'm not sure I understand it, though I may in the future. Until then, perhaps, this book is still open, and can be continuously mined for insight by interested readers.

Rating:
Summary: Saramago¿s magical mystery tour
Review: This book was my introduction to the works of senor Jose. Both in the construction of the story and in Saramago's sparse poetic writing style one can not help but notice similarities with the late visionary from Buenos Aires. Yet, the (anti)hero of this story gets his hands dirty like few of Borges' characters, and actually gets sick after being soaked in a rain storm.

Since many of the previous reviews have already dealt with many of the details of the story, I will not go into them. In all its simplicity the story touches deeply upon issues that have occupied mankind for thousands of years. Based on the principle that we don't make decisions, but that decisions make us, Saramago shows us how senor Jose's own actions teach him /(us) that he/(we) will never be truly be able to understand what motivates others. In addition, Saramago illustrates in a manner that is completely devoid of religious or other cliches in how far distinction between the living and the dead can be artificial and meaningless. Both the story and its execution are of flawless mastery that one finds in the likes of Kafka and Borges. Senor Jose is this story's main character, maestro Jose its writer.

Rating:
Summary: All the hype
Review: This is the story of Senhor Jose, a clerk who works in the Central Registry in some city in some country. As in Saramago's Blindness, we're never sure where the novel takes place, or even exactly when (though we can guess it's modern-day Portugal). Without the mention of cars and appliances, for example, we would never even know that All the Names takes place within the last century. Saramago's works are timeless, placeless, faceless. All the Names, at times, is also paceless.

I love Saramago's elliptical style, but this book never really gets rolling. Saramago sacrifices plot for the pure beauty of his writing and the expression of his timeless message of our collective humanity, but after 50 pages you'll find yourself begging for story. The novel eventually hits a bit of a groove, but too late to save it. Throw in some curious Christ imagery and the fruitlessness of Jose's efforts and you'll steam through the last few pages with great eagerness to slam it shut.

As in Blindness, only one character get a name -- Senhor Jose. He represents the great majority, many of whom live and die in pointless obscurity in the files of the Central Registry. Day after day, Senhor Jose files index cards, takes in new information, stacks papers. He follows the protocol that the rest of the Registry follows, including waiting in line at the door to enter in order and speaking only when spoken to. These are data soldiers who retreat only at the end of the day.

Senhor Jose's only life outside the Registry is in examining the lives of celebrities. He begins to hoard the index cards of politicians, actors, and athletes. One day, Senhor Jose finds the card of a common woman and decides to follow any lead he can to track her down. He finds a life not exciting but normal; nevertheless his obsession for the woman grows. His quest takes him into the woman's private world and begins to tear Senhor Jose's life apart. By the end of All the Names, Senhor Jose is changed, his view of all the names in the Central Registry altered forever.

All the Names is a neat little book at times, but dreadfully slow at others. Blindness is far superior and covers much of the same territory. Read it first.

Rating:
Summary: exceptional
Review: This was my first encounter with Jose Saramago, and what a meeting this proved to be ! The book is fascinating, from first to last page. It leads you in the direction you absolutely don't expect and therefore you can't guess what is going to happen next - one of the reasons this book is so captivating. I could not help to imagine that Senhor Jose is Saramago himself, realizing on pages of this book his hidden longings and desires. The strange longings and desires many of us hide deep in our minds, another reason the plot was believable, even thought it seems absurd. Saramago's style is not difficult to read at all, you get used to it after several pages and then you just flow with the book. I could not put this one down. The translation is very good, and I am already recommending this book to my friends

Rating:
Summary: Psychological Journey
Review: Unlike anything I've read, Jose Saramago's unique novel was a treat to read. I wanted to see what a "Nobel Prize Winner" book was like. It was filled with merciless, relentlessly long, run-on sentences. Though I had to read some sections over and over to understand what Saramago was trying to communicate, I completed the book feeling somewhat connected to the main character, Senhor Jose. It is definitely an interesting book to read. Perfect book to pore your head into at a coffeeshop, undisturbed.

Rating:
Summary: It was awful!!!!!!
Review: Well, I found the style hideously annoying, Trying as I may to become immersed in the foul tyrades of peculiar literary structure, The proportions of which the monotonous, humdrum plot struggled along, only to frustrate, thwart, and impede the reader to derangement, Oh, if only I had wanted to read prose, and not the psychological, even metaphysical thriller as advertised and greatly anticipated, then by God I would have roamed the posey section of Borders Books, Anticipating sumptious amounts of long-winded, well read wordage,

Rating:
Summary: Who We Are & What We Leave Behind
Review: What marks does a person make while living? What marks does a person leave behind when he or she is gone? What is the meaning of these marks? These are the questions that Saramago explores in All the Names.

This is the story of a aging, low-level clerk in the Registrar's office. After decades of doing his work perfectly and invisibly, Senhor Jose begins to track the lives of famous people using newspapers and, more importantly, the information at the Registrar's office as sources. While uncovering information about some famous person, he accidentally pulls out the information card on a woman who is not famous and he begins to track her down. In fact, he becomes obsessed with tracking her down--ultimately discovering that her life seems in its own way to be as empty as his. And that he loves her.

This is a short novel filled with ironies. In tracking down this woman, Senhor Jose realizes how empty his life has been and yet his search gives meaning to his life. In fact, his search begins to cause all kinds of changes in himself and in others around him. In his search to create a real woman from a piece of paper in the Registrar's office, he creates himself instead and alters those with whom he comes in contact.

In All the Names, Saramago has written a strong and interesting novel. If not quite up to the power of his novel Blindness, it is still good reading. I am amazed at the effectiveness of Saramago style (at least as is comes across in translation). His long paragraphs with limited punctuations containing entire conversations, including multiple characters thoughts and impressions are well done. It is an interesting approach, especially to someone used to the traditions of direct quotation in written conversations so common in modern fiction. The way his characters are not known by name but by who they are is fascinating. (The only exception to this is Senhor Jose who is in many ways more faceless than characters without names. Interesting.) Saramago is definitely a unique stylist. After Blindness and All the Names, I'm looking forward to going back and reading some of his older books.

Rating:
Summary: Names, memories and death
Review: WHEN I started reading Jose Saramago's ALL the Names, I was under the spell of his two previous works, Blindness and Gospel according to Jesus Christ. This book, All the Names, is also powerful but not in comparison with above mentioned other two. This seems to be like a dectective story. The suspence is not physical but spiritual. You happen to seek an unknown human being with bare minimum statistical information. Once you are on the way, the seek becomes obsessive and hidden. you want to know more about her and you find the hurdles and mysteries only. you are doing something unpermitted and you think you are being observed by the head of the organization also. Saramago's genius with the language and imagination is gripping. you may be bored if you look for some amusement or time pass. this is unique literary experience and you find yourselves in the dark corridors of secrets. Death and Memory are the key points. Death brings everything to close. you end there. Then somebody starts seeking for you. you start living again in somebodyelse' memory and imagination. This book can be termed as a detective love story. one man seeks to discover his beloved whom he has never seen and never known at all.Unknown is love, death also.

Rating:
Summary: A Search for Connections
Review: With the exception of "The Tale of the Unknown Island," I've loved all of Jose Saramago's books. Although my favorites are "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis" and "Balthasar and Blimunda," I think "All the Names" is just as deserving of five stars.

All the names concerns itself with a labyrinthine office called The Central Registry, a place where all births, marriages, deaths and whatever are diligently recorded and overseen by someone simply known as the Registrar, a person who obviously wields great power. The Central Registry is a virtual maze of records. In fact it's so huge that one poor genealogical researcher who ventured in simply couldn't find his way out. Luckily, the man survived, but as Saramago tells us, "He was discovered...after a week, starving, thirsty, exhausted, delirious, having survived thanks to the desperate measures of ingesting enormous quantities of old documents...The head of the Central Registry, who, having given the man up for dead, had already ordered the imprudent historian's record card and file to be brought to his desk, decided to turn a blind eye to the damage."

The protagonist of "All the Names," is Senhor Jose, a rather insignificant clerk in the Central Registry, who really has very little life outside of his work. His primary indulgence is his hobby: collecting copies of the certificates of the more "famous" filed in the Central Registry along with newspaper clippings of the persons involved.

One day, as Senhor Jose is removing the certificates of several "celebrities," he pulls an extra card by mistake. This extra card belongs, not to a celebrity, but to a thirty-six year old woman whose identity is unknown. It doesn't take Senhor Jose long to become obsessed with this woman and with the details that surround her life. His quest for this unnamed woman leads Senhor Jose into waters he heretofore had been more than a little wary of treading. In his search to know the object of his obsession, Senhor Jose discovers that he, himself, is not quite who he thought he was. He becomes a liar, a forger and a burglar, much to his surprise. I won't tell you whether his revelations about himself please or dismay Senhor Jose, or whether he finds the woman, but I will tell you that the woman is not what he is ultimately looking for. Suffice it to say that Senhor Jose emerges from his search a very different man from the one who began it, for this is a book of self-discovery and self-revelation. It is an allegory of life and art and mortality of the highest order.

"All the Names" has an over-riding sardonic tone that is perfect for the subject matter involved. It doesn't take an astute reader long to figure out that Senhor Jose is really Saramago, himself, and that the unnamed woman is but his elusive muse. But does this muse exist in reality or only in imagination? That is something you'll have to find out when you read the book for the end is a little surprising.

While I love Saramago's books, he can be a little heavy-handed at times. This certainly isn't the case in "All the Names." This book has a comic lightness in its writing that reminded me a little of Milan Kundera. But just a little. Both Saramago and Kundera are extraordinarily original and creative and any comparison of the two would ultimately be grossly unfair. Senhor Jose, though, is a wonderfully comic character and "All the Names" is a wonderfully comic and delicate book. This is a book in which it would have been so easy to "get it wrong." Always the master, however, Saramago get it "all right."

In the end, "All the Names" is a book that can really touch the heart. It personifies, in the character of Senhor Jose, the search each of us makes for connections in life: connections to the world, to something outside of ourselves, to other people. It personifies our need for something permanent in our fragile lives and something we know we can hold onto...forever.