Blindness - Jose Saramago

It's been two days since I finished Blindness. And I thought two days would be enough time to really process what I thought of this one. But here I sit, two days of thinking of what to say, and I'm still not really sure.

That I even decided to pick up this book and start it is a real accomplishment. I tried so hard to read Saramago's History of the Siege of Lisbon last year. But once the dog started narrating I was just done. And I couldn't get past Saramago's lack of paragraph breaks for dialogue. I guess the story just wasn't interesting enough for me to do so much work to figure out what was talking.

But in this case, Blindness was interesting enough, and horrifying enough, and realistic enough. (No dogs narrate in this one). The book starts with a man suddenly going blind at an intersection. Despite the honking cars, he's paralyzed by indecision and cannot find a way to get out of his car. He's disoriented. A "good samaritan" helps him home and into his house (and then steals his car -but don't worry that guy goes blind too, so Karma). 

The blindness begins to spread. The government, also paralyzed by fear, decides to stick the blind and those they've come in contact with in an unused former mental asylum. They deliver food three times a day. Otherwise the blind are left to fend for themselves. More and more afflicted begin to arrive. The conditions are deplorable. No working toilets, no clean water. 

And then, one group of the blind begin to terrorize the others. Until, well, I don't want to give too much away. But it's actually painful to read, but again not totally foreign because sometimes epidemics do not bring out the best in people. And just because people are afflicted does not mean that they are honorable or even worthy of assistance. Being blind brings out the worst in people in some cases.

The interesting parts are how Saramago really nails all those things we rely on sight for. The blind don't even recognize each other. People they've known or been intimate with are strangers. It's altogether pretty fascinating. 

Again, I'm not a big fan of how Saramago constructs his dialogue. It's confusing and irritating, but in this case, I didn't mind a little extra work to get it done. So, I can see why he's a nobel laureate, and I kind of forgive him for that Lisbon thing.

4/5 Stars.