"I shall go on painting the second picture but I know it will never be finished."

With these words, José Saramago opens Manual of Painting and Calligraphy. This first sentence struck me immediately - it is perhaps one of the finest opening sentences I've ever seen in any novel. So bold, so full of potential and elegance, suggesting so much but telling so little, an invitation to join a story that started only a short while ago.

What follows is a fitting story for Saramago's first published novel - reprinted for this edition but originally published in 1976. Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is the story of a portrait painter who's aware that his skills as a painter are limited. Faced with painting the portrait of a powerful industrialist, he becomes obsessed with the idea of capturing the man's true essence - first in a second, unauthorized painting, and then in words.

Manual of Painting and Calligraphy reads like an artist's discovery, a love letter to the act of creation, and more specifically to writing. Though the passages about painting are lovingly rendered, the nameless narrator's (and through him, Saramago's) growing affinity for the written word is evident as he stretches his writing to accompany his personal observations and recollections and recounting current events of the time.

Those familiar with Saramago's work will recognize the broad flourishes of language and passages of wandering thoughts that marked his best work, but coupled with the self-awareness of someone still learning their voice. In one passage, the narrator compares his own writings with a letter he received. It's hard not to hear Saramago himself when reading "I ask myself how this letter would have sounded if written by me, and I can imagine how long-winded it would have been, with interminable phrases, trying to explain the inexplicable, or worse still, giving vent to recriminations and insults." The flights of fancy of Saramago's later work is absent here, but the sense of exploration of the craft remains.

The final words of Manual of Painting and Calligraphy are as bold and striking as the first, and I'm glad I can put them here without giving the ending away: "'And one of these days I'll give you some papers of mine I'd like you to read.' 'Secrets?' she asked, smiling. 'No. Just papers. Things I've written.'"

Saramago spent a career sharing things he's written - Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is an insightful look into the early work of a master of his craft.