Customer Reviews

Death with Interruptions

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

"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.

Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago's latest novel, in the tradition of three of my favorite writers known for impressive first lines, Albert Camus, Toni Morrison and Herman Melville, begins with the intriguing sentence: "The following day, no one died." This allegory for modern times takes place in an unnamed country, with characters, most of whom have no names and where even death, like the other characters, does not even merit an upper case "D" to begin her name. Yes, she is female, composed only of a skull and bones, although she can transform herself into a reasonably attractive woman, and never of course sleeps. With death's moratorium on death, some results are immediate and obvious. The cardinal of the catholic church is one of the first to be upset. With no death, there is no resurrection. And with no resurrection, there is no church. Funeral homes are faced with an economic melt-down since they can now only offer burials or cremations to dogs, cats, canaries and other animals since animals were not affected by this stay on death. Nursing homes and hospitals are overrun with patients who cannot die and cannot live.

Of course something has to happen to throw a monkey wrench into what appears to be eternal life as indeed it does although this is one of those novels where a review should not be a plot summary. (Actually no review should be just a plot summary.) Just let it be said that Saramago adroitly introduces into his narrative a mediocre cellist-- who has a fascinating encounter with death-- who admits that he is no rostropovich and whose favorite pastime is playing bach's suite number six for unaccompanied cello at night in his apartment. Surely nothing, as the brilliant film director Ingmar Bergman would agree, reminds us more of death than any one of bach's suites for unaccompanied cello. Additionally the author's messenger of death appears as a mailman-- who in this instance does not ring twice-- not a new device although an effective one. Joyce Carol Oates, who if there is any justice should win the Nobel Prize for Literature herself, sends death for Marilyn Monroe in her incomparable novel BLONDE as a messenger riding a bicycle. In this novel death wishes that she had used the death head moth, which has on the back of its thorax a pattern resembling a human skull, as her messenger, a chilling thought.

Mr. Saramago's humor is both subtle and wry. Death chides her partner-in-crime the sythe for being lazy because he often spends all his days leaning against a wall. Since she consists of only bones, death ordinarily would not be able to lick envelopes-- although she has all kinds of powers and can move through walls-- but she takes advantage of self-sealing envelopes for her mail-outs.

Literary critics have said that often winning the nobel prize dries up the creative juices of writers. While that case may be made for some authors, it does not hold true in this instance. DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS is a fantastic allegory that criticizes the church, the government and familes who are too selfish to care for sick and dying relatives. It is also a beautiful tribute to the power of love as the ending, which is as powerful as the first sentence, illustrates.

Mr. Saramago indeed writes like no other author.

Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize in literature, recently (and infamously) remarked that American readers and writers are "too isolated, too insular" for an American author to win the Nobel in the foreseeable future. Proponents of American literature have rightly been outraged, sending Engdahl recommended reading lists of some of the best the United States literary community has to offer.

One thing few Americans can quibble with, however, is Engdahl's observation that too little international literature is available in translation in the United States, a point that was borne out when Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio won the Nobel earlier this month. Almost none of Le Clézio's works are available in the U.S. In addition, only about three percent of books published in the U.S. each year are works in translation. Is it possible that American readers are isolated after all?

Fortunately, one of the benefits when a non-English-speaking author does win the Nobel is that his or her subsequent works are likely to be among that three percent of publications that are available to U.S. audiences in translation. One of these authors is José Saramago, a Portuguese novelist and playwright who won the Nobel in 1998 and whose 1995 novel BLINDNESS has experienced great popularity in the United States, to the point of being turned into a feature film. Now, with DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS (originally published in the Portuguese in 2005), he offers Americans looking to read beyond their borders an opportunity to discover what the European literary scene is all about. Oh, and it's a great story to boot.

Saramago's novel is set in an unnamed country where, on the first day of the new year, people cease to die. Those who were, so to speak, at death's door are permanently stuck in the doorway. Those who are declared "lost causes" by doctors following car crashes and other accidents somehow pull through. At first, people rejoice at the prospect of living, so it seems, forever. Soon, however, the philosophical implications and practical realities of the situation set in. "It's hard to understand," Saramago writes, "why no one saw at once that the disappearance of death, apparently the peak, the pinnacle, the supreme happiness, was not, after all, a good thing."

Not only are there practical matters: What will happen to the funeral industry and the life insurance market? How will nursing homes cope with the constant influx of new residents when the oldest ones fail to...move on? How can families practically and emotionally continue to care for terminally ill family members indefinitely? There are also philosophical considerations: What are the implications for religion, which forms its entire belief system on the concept of death and rebirth? What are the national implications when a single country's inhabitants fail to die, even though their neighboring nations continue to live and die as they have for millennia?

Saramago eloquently and cleverly explores these provocative notions in a combination of philosophical discussions among religious, governmental and business leaders, as well as vignettes that illustrate the impact of the absence of death on individuals and families. After introducing these big ideas in ways both playful and profound, Saramago introduces the central character of his novel: death herself. After witnessing the chaos that has ensued, she settles on a different policy (which, in truly modern fashion, she conveys in the form of a manifesto to be shared with the media). But she didn't bargain on what proves to be a very personal connection with a cellist, one of her intended targets.

Reading DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS will require a few adjustments for many American readers. Translator Margaret Jull Costa has impressively translated Saramago's dense prose, which is notable for its long, often convoluted sentences and paragraphs that can stretch for dozens of pages. Mastering this prose style, however, and engaging fully in the complex philosophical questions presented here requires readers to be fully intellectually engaged with the book, and the result is a challenging but exhilarating reading experience. Perhaps American publishers have lulled American readers into not only isolation but also intellectual complacency.

DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS is a novel of ideas that also has at its heart a compelling storyline. This is the kind of literature in translation that might finally cure Americans of their insularity.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

This is a truly curious novel indeed- the first half of this novel is almost certainly the funniest material Saramago has ever crafted, arousing more guffaws from this reader than even "Seeing" and "The Stone Raft". Saramago is, alongside Coetzee and Ngugi, one of our finest contemporary fabulists, and I would propose that the first half of "Death At Intervals" is a compact and consummate expression of his art, rich in detail, compassion and honesty.

The second half, however, is frankly embarassing, almost unbearably so. Cloying claptrap that recycles a threadbare conceit- deity deigns to pay us wretched mortals a visit, falls helplessly in love with adorable human being, who gives said deity an extensive education in the pleasures of earthly life. Uppity immortal is humbled, assumes incarnate form to fornicate with human beau. Unfortunately, Saramago's take on this is much closer to the godawful "City Of Angels" than Wenders' "Wings Of Desire"- expect generous helpings of pap slathered with dollops of wince-worthy dialogue. Sprinkle liberally with romance novel commonplaces. I wish it were all some elaborate hoax, some ironic joke that Saramago is having at my expense.

The first half of the novel finds Saramago in sparkling form, but unless you are a connoisseur of corn, I suggest that you stop at the point where Saramago begins probing the state of Death's love life.

This is the first Saramago book that I have read, but it will not be the last. I had previously been put off by the physical appearance of his text -- those rectangular blocks of gray print with no indents, no quotations, and very few paragraphs. But what I had not realized was the depth of his intelligence, the brilliance of his invention, or most importantly the extent of his wit. This is a satire, based on the simple premise that Death, or rather the small-d death responsible for this particular country, takes a seven-month holiday and in all that time no one dies. A good thing? Not necessarily, because the inability to die affects also the terminally ill and the victims of horrendous road accidents, so that soon the hospitals, hospices, and eventide homes are full to bursting. The undertakers are out of work. Before long, the maphia (sic) have gone into the business of transporting moribund family members over the border so that they may end their lives elsewhere.

But Saramago does much more than merely play with amusing what-ifs; there are philosophical implications also. There is, for instance, a telephone conversation early in the book between the prime minister and the cardinal. While the politician juggles impressively vapid press-releases, the churchman points out that without death there is no need for a church, and that it is his duty to pray for the resumption of death so that his flock may ascend to eternal life. Of all the numerous targets in the book (the author is an equal-opportunity skeptic), Saramago reserves his strongest ire for organized religion; as one of the characters remarks, "god is god and he's done almost nothing but fail." But it is not just the church that needs death; Saramago's point is that it is vital to life, and indeed we should all welcome it, even in its unpredictability.

None of the people in the book are given proper names. Nonetheless, individual characters do begin to emerge, starting with death herself (for in romance languages the word for death is always feminine). Even when she decides to resume work, there is one person (a professional cellist -- Saramago clearly knows music) who somehow manages to elude her. So she visits his home, watches him walking his dog, attends his rehearsals and one of his performances, and finds herself falling in love. The book, which had begun as an intellectual game, ends in warm humanity. Medieval artists used to depict the Dance of Death as a sinister reaping by a skeleton with a scythe. Saramago gives us a dance WITH death, in the form of an attractive young woman who comes into our willing embrace. Would it were ever so!

"The following day, no one died."

It almost pains me to not give 'Death with Interruptions' the highest possible rating, because it is Jose Saramago, and because the writing is beautiful, and because it ends so very elegantly. It may, in fact, be one of the most perfect endings I have ever read. Even so, I have to be honest and say that I feel that other parts of the book are flawed, and if I didn't know I would be rewarded, I might not have stuck it out to the end.

The concept, like much of Saramago's work, is immediately engaging: what if death stopped taking lives for a time? Within the borders of a single country, for a certain time, nobody dies. What if death did the unthinkable - what if she changed the rules?

The results, in Saramago's able and imaginative hands, are at times sad and at other times ridiculous, but they never fail to be plausible. I can see everyday people, politicians, criminals, and businessmen reacting in much the way he describes. 'Death with Interruptions' doesn't have the powerful shock value of 'Blindness' or the simple elegance of 'The Stone Raft,' but it is always believable.

For such a small book, however, 'Death with Interruptions' tries to be too large a story. Saramago, in my opinion, is best when he focuses on the everyday person, when he takes big world-shaking events and places them into the context of the individual experience. Much of 'Death with Interruptions' is about government and religious leaders making big decisions, and in those parts, he lost me. When the story found the individual family whose tragedy sought a solution to death's sudden absence, or when it later found the man who was able to defy death herself, those are the moments when the book really found its center and its focus, when the story became everything I hoped it might be. But it has to be said, some of the other parts of the book, the parts where we lose focus on the individual and look at the movements of a nation, almost lost me.

Saramago's use of language is lyrical, almost poetic. His ideas are groundbreaking and original. His vision is fearless. And when he's really on his game, his stories are breathtaking marvels. 'Death with Interruptions' is nearly all of that. It loses focus at a few key moments, but finds it again, and the ending is everything it could have been and more. The ending makes reading the book worth it.

The ending, when it comes, is beautiful.

Saramago is more than a philosopher. He's also a whacko-sopher - and his takes on man's condition is all the better for it.

The Editorial Review above from PW tells you enough about the plot. That from the Washington Post is more book report than review (if you haven't read it yet, don't).

Reading Saramago is a bit of an acquired taste. You must be patient until you understand the flow of his words into sentences and the sentences into, often very long, paragraphs. Your efforts will be rewarded as you adapt to Saramago's satiric style. This book lampoons political bodies and leaders; church and leaders; media; and organized crime. Even some everyday folk come in for his ever so soft barbs.

If you haven't read Saramago, join in and enjoy. If you have, odds are you don't read reviews about his books - you just order the books as soon as they hit print.

I'm not a big believer in lists like "the 10 greatest novels" and "my top 5 authors"; however, if pressed, I would have a hard time not including Jose Saramago on my authors list and his novels Blindness and The Cave on any list of great novels of the past 15 years. Saramago's latest offering is Death with Interruptions which, if not the best of his best, certainly adds luster to his reputation.

In a sense, this is really two books. The first part gives us the big picture of a country dealing with the fact that death has stopped happening within its borders. Briefly, it seems like a blessing, but as the ill and injured start to pile up with no hope of release or healing, societal shifts start happening: rules about insurance change, religious leaders struggle to find a place, funeral directors alter their business, and a criminal sub-culture of carrying the ill across national borders so they can die springs up. The presence of death becomes noticeable in her absence and then she returns with violet letters giving people one week warnings of their impending demise. And once again, society undergoes a seismic shift. It's fascinating to see it play out.

The last part of the book takes us up close and personal with death herself. We are treated to Saramago's vision of this character, her abilities and qualities. And, finally, how she deals with an unprecedented situation: a person whose death time has been missed and can now live on indefinitely. We see the development of a relationship between these two characters and what that means for each of them.

Somehow, though, this book doesn't quite reach the heights of his greatest novels. His comfort in the mastery of his style is there--those beautiful long sentences and paragraphs--but this story seems less intimate than some of his other books. This novel seems more about the ideas than it is about reaching through a powerful story to big ideas. In places, this is a tale that I felt I heard before.

Still, to Saramago's credit, none of this slowed me down. Even with its weaknesses, it is better than most of what is available on the bookshelves. Like many authors of his success, he suffers in comparison to his own previous work. That should never stand in the way of enjoying a book as good as this.