Death with Interruptions (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)
Key Phrases: eventide homes, apprentice philosopher, acherontia atropos

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Saramago's philosophical page-turner hinges on death taking a holiday. And, Saramago being Saramago, he turns what could be the stuff of late-night stoner debate into a lucid, playful and politically edgy novel of ideas. For reasons initially unclear, people stop dying in an unnamed country on New Year's Day. Shortly after death begins her break (death is a woman here), there's a catastrophic collapse in the funeral industry; disruption in hospitals of the usual rotational process of patients coming in, getting better or dying; and general havoc. There's much debate and discussion on the link between death, resurrection and the church, and while the clandestine traffic of the terminally ill into bordering countries leads to government collusion with the criminal self-styled maphia, death falls in love with a terminally ill cellist. Saramago adds two satisfying cliffhangers—how far can he go with the concept, and will death succumb to human love? The package is profound, resonant and—bonus—entertaining. (Oct.)
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From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Ron Charles

No matter how deadly serious his subjects, there's always been something essentially childlike at the heart of José Saramago's work -- that eagerness to consider simple, outlandish what ifs: What if the Iberian Peninsula broke off and floated away? What if everybody suddenly went blind? What if most voters cast blank ballots?

Like Franz Kafka, his literary ancestor, the unrepentant Portuguese communist and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for literature frequently focuses on the way people react to absurd situations. In Death with Interruptions, there's even a goofy touch of Woody Allen's "Don't Drink the Water," but this may be Saramago's most cosmic novel. While not as aggressively heretical as The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, which provoked such outrage from the Catholic Church in 1991, his new book asks us to imagine a cessation of "the most normal and ordinary thing in life": dying. If you don't think such speculation is amusing, well, get your own Nobel Prize.

The story opens at the start of a new year in a small, unnamed modern country. As is typical of the allegorical universalism in much of Saramago's work, we never get a precise location or time period. The frenetic, amiable narrator refers to characters only by each one's generic function: e.g. prime minister, mother, editor. All of them are confronting the most unusual nonevent in human history: "No one died. . . . New year's eve had failed to leave behind it the usual calamitous trail of fatalities, as if old atropos with her great bared teeth had decided to put aside her shears for a day."

Initially, this "death strike" seems like "humanity's greatest dream since the beginning of time," but the horrible ramifications quickly become apparent: Traffic accidents still leave people mangled; illness strikes with the same ferocity; old age continues to ravage.

The first section of the novel describes "the ditherings of the government" trying to deal with this calamity. No writer since Orwell has zeroed in with such precision and vigor on the language of self-serving administrators, and Death with Interruptions contains some of Saramago's best satire about government corruption, military jingoism and media hysteria. Whole pages of this novel seem lifted from the recent news about our own economic crisis. The prime minister takes to the airways to make a statement "whose very incomprehensibility was intended to calm the commotion gripping the nation."

Religious leaders come off no better, reacting to the situation with a flurry of obfuscation and sophistry: "The church has never been asked to explain anything," the cardinal assures the prime minister. "Our specialty, along with ballistics, has always been the neutralization of the overly curious mind through faith." As the crisis grows more severe, the clergy "organize a national campaign of prayer, asking god to bring about the return of death as quickly as possible."

Much of this section focuses on the political and economic upheaval caused by eternal life, as the country tries to adjust to living bodies piling up, "one on top of the other, like the leaves that fall from the trees onto the leaves from previous autumns." Various industries -- life insurance, hospitals, undertakers, retirement homes -- lobby aggressively for government relief. But there are scenes of real pathos here, too, amid the gallows humor: the personal costs of caring for so many desperately sick relatives, the horrible choices faced by burdened families, the nasty bargains they're forced to make with organized crime.

Halfway through, just as the satire is getting a little tedious, the novel shifts away from its national scope to concentrate instead on the Grim Reaper in disarmingly personal terms. It turns out that death (lowercase "d," she insists) is a discreet, elegant woman, if you can get past the skeleton and the sheet. She's conscientious and efficient, but still uses fine stationery rather than e-mail. "It has the charm of tradition," she tells her scythe, "and tradition counts for a lot when it comes to dying." The duty of dispensing with so many people day after day is "not exactly a killingly hard job," but it can grow tedious. "Death did indeed work her fingers to the bone," the narrator notes, "because, of course, she is all bone." Who could blame her for taking a little time off? If this sounds campy, it is, but Saramago is always ten steps ahead of us, subverting clichés, interjecting ancient philosophical concerns into his gags and scattering grenades of bitterness among the laughs.

After death's seven-month vacation, she devises a new scheme to dispense with human beings: She'll send people a letter on violet paper, announcing that they have a week left to live, "to sort out their affairs, make a will, pay their back taxes and say goodbye to their family and to their closest friends. In theory, this seemed like a good idea." But of course, in practice it raises all sorts of complications for the "preposthumous."

The real surprise, though, is death's. When one of her violet letters -- to a middle-aged cellist -- is returned unopened, she's alarmed, then intrigued. "How on earth am I going to get out of this fix," she wonders. "Poor death." And here Saramago catches us off guard once again, turning from the straight-faced absurdity of the novel's first section to a poignant romance. How can the most tender relationship that Saramago has ever written involve death as a nervous lover? This is a story that can't possibly work or affect us, but it does, deeply, sweetly. It's a novel to die for.


Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (October 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151012741
• ISBN-13: 978-0151012749
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #147,518 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nobel Prize Winner Hits it Again - Another chilling "What-if" journey..., September 18, 2008

By	D. Kanigan (CT, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Saramago takes us on another haunting and chilling "what-if" journey (similar to Blindness & Seeing). This story is set in an unnamed country in modern Western Europe. On the first day of the New Year, no one dies -for unknown reasons. The populace rejoices over reaching the eternal goal.

"Humanity's greatest dream since the beginning of time, the happy enjoyment of eternal life here on earth, had become a gift within the grasp of everyone, like the sun that rises every day and the air that we breathe."

And then reality strikes - religious leaders lose their grounding ("if there was no death, there could be no resurrection, and if there was no resurrection, then there would be no point in having a church") - funeral homes and life insurance companies have lost their reason for existence ("then, without warning, the tap from which had flowed a constant, generous supply of the terminally dying was turned off") - hospitals and nursing homes start overflowing with the terminally ill - and the dark side of humanity (rearing its ugly head in "its enormous capacity for survival") begins to capitalize on the opportunity by transporting the terminally ill (for a fee) into bordering countries where Death continues to exist on its customary path.

The conclusion is eventually reached after several months that if "we don't start dying again, we have no future."

There are three distinct plot lines in this book. (1) "What-if" Death stops or is 'interrupted' (for 8 months). (2) "What-if" Death restarts (but under new conditions which I won't give away) and (3) "What-if" `death' (who comes 'alive' as a beautiful 36-year old woman executioner) fails to execute on a single victim (a middle aged cellist) on the required "due date."

My assessment:

* This is largely a deep, philosophical and engaging "what-if" rendering of what would happen if Death paused, restarted and "missed." Saramago's imagination, musings and reflections on human behavior are a wonder. There is little individual character development until the third plot line when he tip-toes into the mind of 'death' and the cellist - however, this does not detract from the Saramago's genius with words and his penetrating and profound storytelling.

* For those new to Saramago's unique and trademark writing style, it takes some getting used to. His prose is dense - he uses very little punctuation - he slides from one person speaking or thinking immediately to the next person within the same sentence broken up only with a comma. So your steady focus and attention is a requirement to follow the narrative - or you find that you will lose your way as to who is saying what. Yet, you will find yourself falling into a rhythm - not unlike the back and forth of normal conversation and thinking that we all experience - which places you squarely at the scene or at the center of the story.

* Unlike Blindness which has veins of hope, love, compassion, this story (perhaps not unlike Death itself) is largely a grim, morbid, hopeless, cynical story of humanity - until the conclusion where there is a flicker of light. That is my only rap against the book. Saramago seems to rail on the church and religion, government, politicians, businesses and human nature. There are no heros in this story. This story is laced with the dark side of life and human nature with very few acts of love, kindness, generosity - so it feels lobsided - dark with little hope. Yet, when he does inject the few incidents of "goodness" and hope into his story - it is welcomed like gulps of air after being under water for seconds too long. And, Saramago's story certainly makes you appreciate life (and Death) as we know and experience it today.

* Finally, my measure of a book is if you happen to remember it months or years after reading it. I suspect, like his novel Blindness, the answer will be YES for me for Death with Interruptions. Saramago's work is genius.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Profound, Whimsical & Absurd, September 16, 2008

By	Mark V. Wilson "MarkVW59" (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

I haven't enjoyed a novel this much for quite some time. Saramago begins with a simple scenario (What if people stopped dying?), then takes it to riotous extremes. This results in a potpourri of profundity, absurdity and laugh-out-loud humor, all presented in a minimalist punctuation style that reads like nothing I've encountered previously. Very highly recommended.

The Nobel committee obviously got this one right.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Death, Be Not Fickle. A Perfect 10!, September 24, 2008

By	Steve Koss (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"The following day, no one died." Thus begins Jose Saramago's latest masterpiece, a quirky, whimsical, and utterly enthralling tale called DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS. Written in Saramago's characteristic style - dense, run-on sentences filled with multiple digressive asides and dialog unseparated by line breaks or quotation marks - the book stands as an offbeat meditation on death and the manner in which humanity copes (or fails to cope) with it.

DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS consists of two loosely linked segments, the latter ultimately looping back to form a perfect circle with the former. In the first half of the book, death is an impersonal presence, noticeable only for its absence within the geographic borders of an unspecified country. Saramago here recalls the premise of the 1934 Frederic March movie, DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY, only this time the holiday lasts far more than three days. As the number of-dying-but-not-dead bodies mounts, the country's various institutions are forced to deal with the implications of a cessation of death. Their reactions give Saramago free satirical reign over the situation as he takes humorous, low-key shots at everything from government, hospitals, and the funeral industry to insurance companies, religious institutions, and the maphia (his spelling).

Death returns in the book's second half, at first in the form of a rather scratchy, hand-written letter announcing its return at a specific date and time. The initial effect is cataclysmic as several months' worth of people accumulated at death's door instantly pass through en masse. Yet even as the natural order of things rights itself, death intervenes and decides (in an apparent fit of boredom) to change the way things are done. The change creates further complications for the living, but the new system nevertheless moves forward smoothly enough. However, an unexpected problem occurs that.forces death to take direct action, leading to the book's bittersweet conclusion.

The first half of Saramago's novel addresses death in the abstract. The numbers are large, the situations impersonal, the focus institutional - all representing in some way the concept of death and humanity's methods of dealing with it. Yet this half is by far the funniest as the author levels his satirical cannon at everyone in sight and comes up with paradoxical lines like one faceless government official's, "...if we don't start dying again, we have no future." In the second half, he switches gears to the level of the personal, developing a heart-rending story around two surprisingly sympathetic individuals. One is a fifty-year-old man, an unmarried cellist living with his pet dog. The other is death, represented as a female entity who ultimately takes on female human form. Saramago's genius is to extract so much from both segments while also tying them together in a touching manner that can only be described as literarily satisfying.

A curious stylistic feature of the book arises from Saramago's choice about referring to his character as death with a small "d" rather than "Death." He opines playfully about multiple entities called death, perhaps one for each country, a different one for plants and animals, and perhaps even a "big D" Death above them all who will someday bring the universe itself to an end. Since his main character is "small d" death, the author abandons capital letters throughout for his proper nouns, whether referring to bach, beethoven, baron munchausen, rome, the pope, proust, dracula, thanatos, or even a.t.m.'s. The only two exceptions - "tower of Babel" and "labyrinth of Knossos" - are certainly more than a little suggestive of Saramago's larger view of life and death.

Saramago's recent work - BLINDNESS, SEEING, and now DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS - have each dwelt upon the social and human implications arising from sudden disruptions in the natural order. BLINDNESS enabled him to explore the boundaries of civil human behavior - how fragile is what we call civilization and how close are we, really, to being animals. SEEING broached the political world and government's institutional paranoia toward the behavior of its own citizens. Now, in DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS, Saramago addresses the ultimate element in the natural order things, turning it on its side to show us in at our best and at our worst, with all our fears and hopes, our joys and sorrows, our failings and our soaring accomplishments. Once again, he proves himself the most deserving Nobelist for Literature in the last two decades. Simply brilliant - 10 Stars.