This book has been on my TR list for a while- and after two separate
recommendations at the Book Club that I go to, I ordered it there and then, sat
in the lounge at Broadway Cinema. So glad I did, easily one of the best books I
have read in recent years- powerful, some might say far fetched, but I would
say absolutely believable, well characterised whilst remaining quite mysterious
too. It's a well plotted and very poetically written novel that looks at how
humanity reacts to adversity, disaster, incarceration, injustice and how
valuable companionship and resilience is in difficult times.
Blindness is set in an unnamed but sunny and densely populated
city, presumably some time in the 1990s. One day, whilst sitting in his car at
a red light, a man goes blind. A good Samaritan escorts him home, stealing his car on
an impulse. The thief goes blind, standing at the side of the road beside his stolen
car. The doctor that examines the first man can find no reason for his sudden
blindness and during his research that evening, the Doctor goes blind. As do
all the patients that he has seen that day. And the policeman who attended to
the car thief. Blindness is spreading, eye to eye, like a contagion- however
inexplicable that may be. The story is told by an all-seeing narrator, seeing
enough for the whole city, and told mostly from the perspective of the Doctor's
wife. She has miraculously retained her sight, but must hide it or become a
slave to the hordes of blind people.
Firstly, a comment on the style. Though I found it to be effective, it's not a writing style that is going to
win over the unconvinced or the fussy. Saramago takes a very McCarthy-ist
approach to punctuation and to dialogue signposts. If you're a fan of the
conventional "Bla bla bla," Said character X, I'd advise against this
novel. Saramago has, I think, made a deliberate attempt to anonymise the
characters in this book- it's hard to work out who's talking and to whom (as
it would be if both parties were blind). None of the characters are named, as
the blind point out throughout- what's the point of a name when there's no face
to attach to it? I loved the nicknames that the author chose to identify the
characters: the Doctor, the Doctor's wife, the first blind man, the thief, the
girl with dark glasses, the old man with the eye patch, the boy with the
squint, even "the dog of tears" which was a personal favourite of
mine. I loved how descriptive the 'names' were and how people can end up being
defined by the slightest characteristic or habit. It's surprising what sticks
when it's just memory that's working.
What I love the most about Catastrophe/End of the World novels is the
collapse of society and the depiction of what emerges out of the collapse.
Blindness
does an excellent job of showing the sheer panic that inevitably descends
on governments, individuals and societies when faced with disaster or danger in the beginning, followed by the absolute abandonment of Human Rights, democracy and any sort of ethical consideration in producing a solution and the social car crash that results.
In this book, the initial blind are rounded up and Quarantined in an unused
mental hospital, provided with supplies and guarded day and night by the army.
As more and more blind arrive in truckloads at the asylum, along with those
that have had contact with the blind, power struggles emerge- no space, no
food- democracies become dictatorships, deadly conflicts break out and the
blind fight amongst themselves for dignity and survival- some of the asylum
chapters are absolutely horrific and show the most animalistic side of human
nature. But it proves that if a person is treated like an animal, they
will become one. The book shows how quickly civilisation and civility can break
down when it's pretty evident that nobody is watching. Once the narrative dramatically shifts to the
outside world, it's interesting to see how the characters that have been
confined react and adapt to a blind world, where they're no longer part of the
feared infected but part of the blind mass.
Blindness is such a brilliant book; thought provoking, tragic, funny in places and
uplifting in a weird way. Like the narrator points out, all children play at
being blind but it is completely impossible to imagine how blind people
function independently on a daily basis. It's such a scary way for society to
come to an end, to be suddenly blind and having to exist in small herds of
strangers, sleeping in shops because you were not at home when you went blind,
depending on memory to move around and never being able to locate your loved
ones or your now useless belongings. Absolutely brilliant, I'm sure I'll
remember it for a long time.
If you've enjoyed catastrophic-rebuilding-civilisation books such as
The
Day of the Triffids,
the Death of Grass or
Fugue for a
Darkening Island then this is an absolutely brilliant addition to that
bunch.
Dangle them off planes, shoot them out of cannons, slide them around in the back of a pick-up truck. As long as you're remembering why and how these poor Zombies are being flung around in such hilarious ways, then it's all good.
