Barbara read and liked Mike's review of Blindness:

"It is rare I give five stars to any book. And rarer still that I would do so and then not recommend the book for everyone. Blindness may be the most skillful writing I have read since Updike. He understands not only the essence of word play and struc...more It is rare I give five stars to any book. And rarer still that I would do so and then not recommend the book for everyone. Blindness may be the most skillful writing I have read since Updike. He understands not only the essence of word play and structure, but also the intangibles of word linkage, emotional energy of words and implied words that are lost on the great pulpy mass that makes up popular fiction.

I could tell you the beginning and middle of this story without giving anything away. But before doing even that, let me tell you the genre it falls into. It is almost Apocalyptic literature. I say almost, because the ending suggests it is altogether something else, but I can't tell you what that is without giving it away. I love and hate Apocalyptic literature with few exceptions. But the exceptions make the genre so appealing. I see The Crysalids and Blindness as making a short shelf of End of Days volumes which inspire more than they detract.

The story starts out with a man stopped at a red light when he suddenly goes blind. This blindness is not like other blindness - he sees everything white instead of black. We never find out his name - or anyone else's name - and we are not destined to, on purpose. The author explains this near the end of the book in a speech by the female protagonist. She is explaining why she doesn't ask an author his name. She doesn't ask because in a world where everyone is blind, names are not meaningful. All that is left in a blind world are momentary experiences.

Saramago literally explores every aspect of both blindness and sight. He includes every idiom about sight, everything sight does for us and does not do. He gives sight its rightful place as King of the Senses, and then rebels against its monarchy by tying it into evil, prejudice, violence, disdain, meaningless sex, and taking the world for granted. Without sight, new virtues (and new vices) are invented by the afflicted.

In this world of blind people, only one person can see. And this becomes her curse. In the world of the blind, everything is turned upside down. The rain is a blessing and the sun is just a putrifier.

It is written with an eye toward stream-of-consciousness, though not sold out to it completely. This is done intentionally, as a person without sight goes from one thought to another, unable to judge how the listener is responding to what is said. This is more reminiscent of Updike and maybe Faulkner, though both of them do it better. We have a world of no names, little punctuation and few definable stops and starts. Just like you would experience if everyone was blind.

At the end of the book, I set it down and spent a long time trying to decide what the author was saying. I can boil it down to two ideas. Every one of our senses has a vocabulary of its own as well as its peculiar good and bad traits. Alongside of this is the author's reluctant admission that the human race is not as organized, fair or resilient as we think we are. Both valid and disturbing thoughts.

Which brings me to why I don't recommend this book for everyone. Those who are bothered by ideas that suggest an unpleasant future will not enjoy this book. Even the ending will leave them high and dry. As my mother often said, "Why can't they write books that make you feel good all the way through?" This is a book of feeling and thinking - much of what you will feel and think will be unique.(less) "