Death with Interruptions in “My Library [is] Dukedom Large Enough”

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Mar 13, 2009 Lynne rated it really liked it

What happens when death takes a holiday? This is precisely what happens in this novel, in which Saramago details the effects that stem from one New Years Day in an unnamed country when no one dies. Though at first everyone treats this news as reason to celebrate, Saramago soon shows us that this is a “future [that:] is perhaps the worst nightmare that could ever have assailed a human being.” The potential long-term effects of no one ever dying again prove to be quite horrifying. That doesn’t mea What happens when death takes a holiday? This is precisely what happens in this novel, in which Saramago details the effects that stem from one New Years Day in an unnamed country when no one dies. Though at first everyone treats this news as reason to celebrate, Saramago soon shows us that this is a “future [that:] is perhaps the worst nightmare that could ever have assailed a human being.” The potential long-term effects of no one ever dying again prove to be quite horrifying. That doesn’t mean that this story is depressing, though. It’s amusing to see all the different groups of people—nobility, clergy, and everyone else—first laugh at the predicament of others when they realize that the absence of death has rendered the other groups irrelevant and then realize that they themselves are in the same predicament.

Saramago does a wonderful job of describing both the big picture that results from death’s vacation—how the country as a whole reacts—and specifically detailing the effect on individual families. He gives us both the forest and the trees. My only quibble, however, is that he could do a better job of marrying these two worlds; as written, they are fairly delineated. I like Blindness better than Death With Interruptions because he does such a good job there of merging the general with the specific.

Saramago is no stranger to describing groupthink and the authoritarian nightmares that can result from it (See Blindness), and this book seems as if it will be no exception. But this narrative is no one-trick pony: Part magical realism, part chick-lit, and part scathing social commentary, and we get all of this coated in a structuralist view of the world where words—or signs—do not equal the object they represent makes the story that much more complex. (I’m definitely a sucker for fiction merged with theory.) That the last line of the novel is exactly the same as the first is no cheap narrative trick bur rather really does bring the story and its readers full circle and, in fact, casts the first sentence of the novel in a whole new light.

Saramago’s narrative style here could be difficult for people to get into. There are no traditional clues to breaks in ideas and thought processes: No paragraphs within chapters, dialogue isn’t broken up into separate sentences, and, indeed, periods overall are used quite sparingly. All of these combined can make it seem as if you’re reading German philosophy, and it isn’t until later in the book that I realized that this writing style is quite purposeful and, in fact, the form mirrors the content. There are fewer than expected full stops in the story, and perhaps this is to mimic the idea that death is the ultimate “full stop” and is currently on hiatus.

Harold Bloom called Saramago the “most gifted novelist alive in the world today,” and Harold Bloom is never wrong. Read this book.
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Mar 16, 2009 Christi rated it liked it

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