Jaymee O. reviewed Going blind? on 2/3/2009

Helpful Score: 2

Saramago explores the social repurcussions of a vast plague. The "white blindness" strikes randomly, afflicting its hosts with loss of sight. What would happen to the fabric of our social order if a sudden, mysterious disease strikes? Are we organized to contain it? Are we humane enough to help the afflicted? The author paints a nightmare portrait of a society consumed with fear. He deftly portrays the worst (and the best) of human nature. The horrors in the novel are not easy to stomach, but like a nasty car wreck, you will find it difficult to look away and impossible to forget. (Faint-hearted readers beware: this is not your book)

This book is one of the 'best-books-that-I-almost-didn't-finish' (along with Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead"). It is a difficult text to read, with unusual formatting and a lack of quotation marks for dialogue. What is interesting is that this creates a metafictional "blindness" for the reader: you have no idea at first who is talking and what is going on. As you adjust to it, you begin to follow this downward spiral, hoping beyond all hope that despair and cruelty will not win the day, and that the unexpected heroes will survive. After "Blindness" marinates in your mind a bit, you will enjoy it for the rich questions it provokes about the nature of humanity.

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