Blindness in Around the Year in 52 Books

Sep 29, 2015 Wendy rated it did not like it

Shelves: in-translation, audiobooks, dystopian, science-fiction

Ouch. I think I strained my reading muscles trying to finish this one. The only things I can say I liked about it are the concept of a world gone blind, and the first few chapters that follow patient zero through his experiences after being struck by "white blindness" while waiting at a red light.

After this, the story went into a weird parable-like place. I couldn't suspend my disbelief with how the society very quickly disintegrated into utter end-of-the-world chaos. The first thing the fiction Ouch. I think I strained my reading muscles trying to finish this one. The only things I can say I liked about it are the concept of a world gone blind, and the first few chapters that follow patient zero through his experiences after being struck by "white blindness" while waiting at a red light.

After this, the story went into a weird parable-like place. I couldn't suspend my disbelief with how the society very quickly disintegrated into utter end-of-the-world chaos. The first thing the fictional government does when identifying this contagious blindness is what any of us would do, right? Round up all the blind people, put them in what amounts to a concentration camp, and have soldiers shoot to kill if any of the blind inmates wanders across a line they can't even see. Conditions disintegrate very quickly in the blind compound because, in addition to being blind, people are apparently also no long able to wash themselves, do any sort of cleaning or maintenance, organize themselves in any way, and seem unable to care about anything beyond the immediate personal needs of food and sex. It seemed to me that along with their sight, they lost something else human inside their brains.

Meanwhile, no one--scientists, the government, the medical community--makes any visible effort to put on some hazmat suits, interact with victims/inmates and try learn the source of the blindness.They won't even provide basic first aid supplies or communicate with victims, though I doubt diseases can be passed over the phone. Blind people are basically reduced to bumbling hungry zombies, and even though it's implied that the world outside the compound is going blind (meaning that presumably the soldiers' families and loved ones are being carted away to similar guarded institutions), containment and trigger-happy shooting of inmates is still the method of choice for dealing with the crisis. I wonder what blind readers make of this novel?

But wait, not everyone goes blind! No, the unnamed Doctor's Wife only pretends to be blind so she can join her husband in the compound. (Are there others? No idea, but they are all probably passively pretending to be blind, too, though why anyone would do that isn't clear). There is also at least one blind person in the compound who was blind long before the epidemic, knows braille, and can presumably live a fairly independent life. But the Doctor's Wife's main prerogative seems to be hiding the fact she can see and dodging any form of leadership/responsibility...at least until things escalate to truly horrific proportions. The "former" blind man doesn't seem to bother teaching the recent blind ways to deal with their condition, so the people just shuffle around, run into walls, destroy the latrines, wander into the "death zone" and get shot, leave most of their dead unburied because they don't want to deal with it, eat and have sex and sleep and hope everything will be over soon. I don't even want to go into the gang rape scene and the way the women embrace it as "the only way to ensure our men get fed" because some blind jerk in another ward brought a gun and is holding food hostage, but I spent entirely too much of this book brainstorming solutions for these individuals' various problems. Dig a latrine in the yard! Ignore the blind man with the gun, he can't actually see you to shoot you! Get the former blind guy teaching survival skills! Train the dogs to lead you around! Maintain communications with the outside world!

Humanity certainly has its dark and grotesque side, but all that goes along with our ability to adapt, to innovate, to think and to problem-solve. There's hardly any of that here, which made this story and characters maddeningly difficult to read about. The book ended finally (finally!) with, as I'd predicted, a heavy-handed ending complete with the deus ex machina, religious symbolism and everything. Fitting, I'd say.

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Sep 19, 2020 Baroness Ekat rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-reading-challenge, banned-books

On an average day, a man is suddenly struck blink - but instead of dark he sees nothing but white. within 48 hours more than a dozen people have been inflicted as well, including the eye doctor he saw about the condition, his wife, the man who first helped him and three people who were in the waiting room of the eye doctor's office.

The health ministry, fearful of a sudden outbreak, take those inflicted and suspected of being contaminated to an old hospital for quarantine. Refusing to leave her h ...more

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Oct 04, 2021 Marie (UK) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2021-reading-challenge

I am sure i should have been able to read something deep and meaningful into this book but for me it was just fits and starts. Some interesting parts but generally just a slog. There were also some discrepencies in the narrative time line for me. What happened to the boy's mum? when all the people mixed why did she not come looking for him. ...more

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