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Tive uma experiência com Saramago e o Memorial do Convento quando era muito nova (14 anos), claramente demasiado nova para apreciar a escrita deste autor. Mais tarde, na faculdade, uma amiga leu-me umas passagens em voz alta, para me mostrar que o livro merecia uma segunda oportunidade. Percebi que sim, mas nem isso foi suficiente para pegar nele, ou em qualquer outro livro de Saramago, apesar de outras tentativas de outras amigas. E assim foi até agora.
I had an experience with Saramago when I was 14 years old, clearly way to young to appreciate his writing. Later, at the university, a friend read some passages from Memorial do Convento out loud to me, and it was enough for me to understand the book deserved a second chance. I understood, but it was still not enough for me to pick up any book from Saramago.
However, I saw Blindness (the movie) a few years ago and really enjoyed it. Made me realise this story had a lot of potential. Now, I watched a YouTube video from a Canadian girl that studies literature (this one), and she was reading this book and sharing her very positive experience with it, and I realised it was finally time to give it a chance. Seems like a cliché (the very Portuguese need for external validation), but it was how it happened, and I ended up devouring the book.
Everyone knows all about it already. One by one, all the inhabitants of a city very similar to our own, on a country very similar to our own, start to go blind. All but a woman. The first batch of blind people is sent to an abandoned asylum, so they can be isolated from the general population, and the woman pretends to be blind so she can go with her husband. Through her eyes, and their experience, we get to see first hand the slow degradation of all we know and take for granted, as humanity, for example.
A lot is packed is this deceptively simple story. It is a modern day fable that was close to become reality during covid years, when so many human rights were trampled in the name of public health. It is a very good book, the writing is deliciously filled with a very fine irony and much Portuguese sarcasm that I have no idea if it translates well. It made a book about such dire events a true pleasure to read.
I highly recommend it but be aware it is not about flowers and little birds, but raw descriptions of the human ability to surprise us in difficult times. I am sure I will read more of his books in the future, not sure if Memorial do Convento will ever be one of them.
On to the next. Until then, Happy Reading!