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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
(d)eathly boring,
By
This review is from: Death at Intervals (Paperback)
My first Jose Saramago, and probably my last.
I picked up this book because it had the most brilliant storyline, I thought it was going to be an excellent read for sure. Sadly, it wasn't. The premise of the book was very unique with death pretty much going on strike, but the execution was highly lacking. The story had the potential to be incredible, with sarcasm and wit and humour coating the pages. It was neither witty nor sarcastic nor funny. It was rather boring. Page after page after page after page of boring text, that just went on and on and on. I never thought I'd see the day where I'd actually miss punctuation! I hated the format of the book, yes it was quite interesting at the beginning, but after the first couple of chapters I just wanted it to stop! He spends the better part of the book describing and explaining things in boring detail without presenting us with any real characters or solid interpretation of his amazing idea, that it just killed the story for me. Yes, one can say it was quite the philosophical book, but so was Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, and yet she was able to create a proper storyline to interpret and convey her philosophies. That being said, one can also say that this is just his style, and that is fair enough, but it's just very disappointing that such a great idea has gone to waste due to this being "his style". It takes us half the book - and that's saying something, since the book is pretty small - to get to the core of the story, and that is death herself. Her decision at the end was very anti-climatic and quite silly to tell you the truth, it just made the whole book seem that much more implausible for me. I also really got tired of the many repetitions throughout the book - I didn't know how many more times I could take his theory about God and death being opposite sides of the coin!! Not to mention his habit of listing all the synonyms of one word, i.e "mime, gesture, pantomime" - p.104, "features, attributes and characteristics" - p.118 - just to name a couple. Sometimes, his style of writing reminded me of Lemony Snicket's series of unfortunate events books, but those were overflowing with sarcasm, wit and humour, and Daniel Handler actually pulled it off wonderfully in his series!! (unlike Saramago - who only succeeded in boring me) To be fair though, once I started reading this story, I would always stop and question one thing or another, with everyone not dying and so on, I'd think why can't they leave for instance? And the next chapter he introduces the idea of people leaving to the border to die, and then I'd think why are the animals dying? And the next chapter he would explain how animals had another death figure. Therefore, I do appreciate the fact that he pretty much tried to think of everything and answer all the questions. It still didn't make it interesting enough for me. This small book took me a week to finish, I couldn't believe how much it dragged. All in all...great and interesting idea, not so much the execution, and I don't see myself reading another Saramago.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Ideas But Poorly Told,
By
This review is from: Death at Intervals (Paperback)
Previously published as Death with Interruptions, Death at Intervals has an interesting story to tell, the problem is Jose Saramago doesn't really know how to tell it in a way that keeps you wanting to keep turning the pages. The story of seven months where nobody can die, then upon Death's return those who about to die are given a warning letter of one week's notice, is all told through a narrator, who to say severely likes to waffle on would be an understatement. It's quite an effort to stick with this story, want to keep reading on to get discover the interesting questions. The tale would have been more interesting if told through the eyes of a couple of characters in first person style. The novel was originally written in Portuguese and translated by Margaret Costa into English. How much Costa plays in the end difficult flow result of the novel, compared to its original language text is unknown. There are some good topics for further discussion in book groups or dinner parties and the like that you'll find if you're prepared to plough through the slow paced narration but to be honest, I don't think a lot of readers will as it is for the most part, unfortunately pretty boring.
Here's an example from opening at a random page (which ended up being 194), "Man and Dog left the park early, the sandwiches were bought to eat at home, there were no naps in the sun. The afternoon and evening were long and sad, the musician picked up a book, read half a page, then threw it down. He sat by the piano to play a little..." Basically if you think you can put up with that kind of writing for an entire novel then this is a good read for you. If not, maybe try something else.
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