A review by gentle_garbage_baby
Blindness by José Saramago

challenging dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I don't know what to feel about this book. It starts off interestingly enough, with the writing style unique as a wall of text - barely any punctuation. After a few chapters I came to realise that this style
might reflect the blindness of the characters - they can't see - and therefore can't read - so the author makes it harder for the you as the reader to read the book.
I might be looking too much into that but it's how I understood the choice to write like this. After a while the text got easier to read, but it became more boring than anything else.

I have a few problems with the characters as well. If I was to describe the doctor's wife in any way, I would say she's the type of person to run along the tracks when a train is coming towards her; not sideways to get out of the way of it. Many of the characters at some point say things which I think are supposed to be profound and and philosophical, but they mainly came across as annoying and pretentious.

I really wanted to like this one; I thought the premise was super interesting, but in the end whole thing just kind of annoyed me.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings