Death at Intervals

In my quest to read literature from other countries, i.e not literature from the UK/US, I decided to read a book by Jose Saramago. He's a Portuguese author who has won the Literature Nobel Prize, so I figured this book was a right step in my literature education.

Death at Intervals has an amazingly interesting plot line. There are three distinct sections of the narrative. In the first section we learn that in a unnamed country death no longer exists. This is initially met with celebration and festivity (yay, everyone can live forever!), but is soon regarded as a curse. Since nobody dies, the concept of religion becomes obsolete, the amount of elderly people increases, and undertakers face bankruptcy. I don't think I fully realised how crucial death is for society until I read this book. So many societal issues arise if nobody dies.

In the second section death has returned and is personified as female. She sends letters to people who are going to die, and in doing so gives them one week to sort out their affairs like saying goodbye to family and friends, writing a will, and settling accounts. This is not a good thing, however, because people who receive their 'death' letter begin to panic. It's kind of horrible to know that you only have one week to live I guess.

In the last section something strange happens (well the whole novel is a little strange so I don't know this section fits on the 'strange scale' if there is one). Death becomes obsessed with a cello player who is unable to die. She sends him numerous 'death' letters but they are constantly returned. So, she decides to take a human female form (up to this point she is a skeleton) and investigates this phenomenon. She quickly becomes infatuated with the cello player and chooses to stay with him. The next day, nobody dies...

Not only was the novel inventive and intriguing, but Saramago also has a unique way with words. He writes in a witty and clever way which is sometimes downright hilarious.
Here are some of my favourite bits:

• "One can never be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do."
• "...death, by herself and alone, with no external help, has always killed far less than mankind has."
• "Due to some strange optical phenomenon, real or virtual, death seems much smaller now, as if her bones had shrunk, or perhaps she was always like that, and it's our eyes, wide with fear, that make her look like a giant."

I have to say though, the structure of the novel was a little off-putting. It was difficult to be absorbed in the narrative because there were no clear paragraphs and the speech between characters was hard to read. However, I really enjoyed the narrative as a whole and the ending was particularly pleasing. Even though it wasn't exactly a circular narrative, there was a definite link between the beginning and the end which reminded me of the circular structure of life and death.

The Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared

For a while this book was everywhere. It was in all the book shops and it had been made into a film, which was being advertised wherever I looked. So I figured it was high time I read it to see what all the fuss was about....

The first thing that has to be said is: this novel was so very funny! The main character, Allan Karlsson’s history seems so far-fetched which adds to the hilariousness of the story. The story is told through events which are occurring in the present, as well as flash backs which show the reader what Allan got up to in his younger years. I much preferred reading the flash back parts because they were the most entertaining. Allan seems to have been involved in major events in history. He meets British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Harry Truman, Chairman Mao, and other historical figures. He, apparently, was the brains behind the atom bomb, and how that came into being is also ridiculous. I really enjoyed how the author, Jonas Jonasson, intertwined Allan’s character into the fabric of real world history. Not only was this a good opportunity to refresh my history knowledge, but it was also laugh out loud funny.

I found the present events (so not the flashback bits) to be a bit nerve wracking at first. I am a sympathetic reader (which means I cry openly at the sad bits, I laugh out loud at the funny bits, I pull weird facial expressions at the confusing bits…sometimes this happens in public and I can’t help it), and so I was feeling really nervous and worried because things go from bad to worse pretty quickly. However, by the end of the novel, order is restored and the ending is a very happy one.

I don’t know how I feel about this novel though. I found it to be rather entertaining and there were a lot of funny passages, but I don’t think this is a book I’d read again in a hurry. I wonder if seeing it everywhere and hearing all these good things about it really raised my expectations because, I have to say, I was a little disappointed. But I guess life would be very boring if you liked everything you read, right?