Mindcrime
New Member
Death with interruptions starts out as classic Saramago, like Blindness it deals more with the outcome and human nature than it does the cause. In Blindness for those who have read it, he deals not so much with the epidemic of Blindness but rather the chaos that it creates among the nation, a fantastic human nature study, well Death with Interruptions is along the same line, The story is basically Death takes a holiday, on New Years Day in the small country, death no longer exists, people no longer die. That is not to say that people are being heeled, no, in fact if you were on the very brink of death, than there would you forever linger in torment. This creates numerous problems for government officials, economic problems with businesses, Insurance companies, not to mention an ever growing population without death to keep it in check. The book starts out wonderfully in its expression of human nature no longer faced with its own mortality, but soon we start to see the conflict and seriousness of a society without death. I felt however Saramago drifted too far away from the issues that were presented early on in the book, and the story suffers toward the end in that he personifies death and takes the reader in a whole new direction that could have better served another book. Anyway, this was a interesting read that, imo lets the reader down a bit at the end.
