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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
'The voice is the sight of the person who cannot see.', February 8, 2008
The reader has a number of choices in reading this novel. It can be read as an allegory about the fragile state of civilisation in adversity. It can also be read as a wonderfully imaginative work of prose. Perhaps it can be considered as an apocalyptic narrative: with mass blindness as an apocalyptic event.
The novel starts with a single incidence of sudden inexplicable blindness. The blindness quickly spreads. Soon, blind people are being contained within an old asylum as though, somehow, containing those who are blind will stop the spread of blindness. While this strategy fails, the time we spend with our seven central characters while confined enables us to experience the breakdown of what most of us would consider civilized behaviour. Are there echoes of `Lord of the Flies', and of `The Day of the Triffids'? Perhaps, but `Blindness' goes in another direction. One character (the doctor's wife) is still sighted, and this gives our central group certain advantages while at the same time providing the reader with a credible narrator.
This is not an enjoyable novel, although it does end on a note of hope. The recovery of vision makes me more inclined to read `Blindness' as an allegory, but I hesitate to apply the label exclusively. Some of the imagery is superb: the `dog of tears' will remain with me for a long time.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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 Blindness (Harvest Book) 0156007754
Jose Saramago
Harvest Books
Blindness (Harvest Book)
Books
'The voice is the sight of the person who cannot see.'
The reader has a number of choices in reading this novel. It can be read as an allegory about the fragile state of civilisation in adversity. It can also be read as a wonderfully imaginative work of prose. Perhaps it can be considered as an apocalyptic narrative: with mass blindness as an apocalyptic event.
The novel starts with a single incidence of sudden inexplicable blindness. The blindness quickly spreads. Soon, blind people are being contained within an old asylum as though, somehow, containing those who are blind will stop the spread of blindness. While this strategy fails, the time we spend with our seven central characters while confined enables us to experience the breakdown of what most of us would consider civilized behaviour. Are there echoes of `Lord of the Flies', and of `The Day of the Triffids'? Perhaps, but `Blindness' goes in another direction. One character (the doctor's wife) is still sighted, and this gives our central group certain advantages while at the same time providing the reader with a credible narrator.
This is not an enjoyable novel, although it does end on a note of hope. The recovery of vision makes me more inclined to read `Blindness' as an allegory, but I hesitate to apply the label exclusively. Some of the imagery is superb: the `dog of tears' will remain with me for a long time.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected"
February 8, 2008
- Overall: 5
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Location: ACT, Australia
New Reviewer Rank: 237
Classic Reviewer Rank: 553
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