The Cave
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

The struggle of the individual against bureaucracy and anonymity is one of the great subjects of modern literature, and Saramago is often matched with Kafka as one of its premier exponents. Apt as the comparison is, it doesn't convey the warmth and rueful human dimension of novels like Blindness and All the Names. Those qualities are particularly evident in his latest brilliant, dark allegory, which links the encroaching sterility of modern life to the parable of Plato's cave. Widowed Cipriano Algor is a 64-year-old Portuguese potter who finds his business collapsing when the demand dries up for his elegant, handcrafted wares. His potential fate seems worse than poverty-to move with his daughter, Marta, and his son-in-law, Maral Gacho, into a huge, arid complex known as "The Center," where Gacho works as a security guard. But Algor gets an order from the Center for hundreds of small ceramic figurines, a task that has Marta and Algor hustling to meet the delivery date. Saramago's flowing, luminous prose (beautifully translated by Costa) serves him well in the early going as he portrays the intricacies of Algor's artistic life and the beginning of his friendship with a widow he meets at the cemetery. The middle chapters bog down as the author lingers over the process of creating the dolls and the family's ongoing debate over Algor's future. But Saramago makes up for the brief slow stretch with a stunning ending after the doll project crashes, when Algor becomes a resident of the Center and finds a shocking surprise in a cave unearthed beneath it. The characters are as finely crafted as Algor's pottery, and Saramago deserves special kudos for his one-dog canine chorus, a stray mutt named Found that Algor adopts as his emotional sounding board. Saramago has an extraordinary ability to make a complex narrative read like a simple parable. This remarkably generous and eloquent novel is another landmark work from an 80-year-old literary giant who remains at the height of his powers. (Nov.) Forecast: Saramago goes from strength to strength, and his readership continues to grow in the U.S. This novel should sell well initially and will be a staple backlist title. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In another of Saramago's haunting fables, an elderly potter has turned to making dolls for sale at the Center, a huge complex of shops near his village. But a chance discovery at the Center sends him and his family fleeing in terror. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Far from resting on his laurels, Portugal's 1998 Nobel laureate, now 80, brings us yet another ruefully comic and disturbing allegorical tale--a worthy companion to its superlative immediate predecessors Blindness (1998) and All the Names (2000). The central figure is sixtyish widower Cipriano Algor, who lives with his married daughter Marta and her husband in an unnamed village not far from the commercial metropolis known only as the Center, to which he travels back and forth, bringing the pots and jugs he fashions out of clay to be sold. One day the "head of the buying department" informs Cipriano that his creations are no longer needed, and his unsold ones must be reclaimed. Acting on Marta's suggestion, Cipriano turns to creating small human figurines, which are initially accepted, but then summarily rejected, by the Center. Out of work, "useful" only to the younger widow he's attracted to and to a devoted stray dog (which he whimsically names "Found") that seems to have come to him "from another world," Cipriano prepares for retirement within the Center--until his accidental discovery of the truth hidden in its recesses reveals the significance of several haunting recurring images (smoke from what seems to be a crematorium, a house with a view of a cemetery, his dream of "a stone statue sitting on a stone bench looking at a stone wall") and sends him on a final enigmatic journey. Saramago's brilliant use of hurtling run-on sentences and thoughtful, mischievous narrative omniscience creates a richly suggestive text in which the plight of an ordinary man subject to an indifferent bureaucracy is juxtaposed with the theme of creation and its ramifications and responsibilities (it's repeatedly emphasized that both Cipriano's creations and we ourselves are "made" of clay) and the deeply ironic idea of a creative force that has become obsolete in a world where all is mandated, controlled, and regimented. We'll say it again: Saramago is the finest living novelist, bar none.

In another of Saramago's haunting fables, an elderly potter has turned to making dolls for sale at the Center, a huge complex of shops near his village. But a chance discovery at the Center sends him and his family fleeing in terror. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

The struggle of the individual against bureaucracy and anonymity is one of the great subjects of modern literature, and Saramago is often matched with Kafka as one of its premier exponents. Apt as the comparison is, it doesn't convey the warmth and rueful human dimension of novels like Blindness and All the Names. Those qualities are particularly evident in his latest brilliant, dark allegory, which links the encroaching sterility of modern life to the parable of Plato's cave. Widowed Cipriano Algor is a 64-year-old Portuguese potter who finds his business collapsing when the demand dries up for his elegant, handcrafted wares. His potential fate seems worse than poverty-to move with his daughter, Marta, and his son-in-law, Marçal Gacho, into a huge, arid complex known as "The Center," where Gacho works as a security guard. But Algor gets an order from the Center for hundreds of small ceramic figurines, a task that has Marta and Algor hustling to meet the delivery date. Saramago's flowing, luminous prose (beautifully translated by Costa) serves him well in the early going as he portrays the intricacies of Algor's artistic life and the beginning of his friendship with a widow he meets at the cemetery. The middle chapters bog down as the author lingers over the process of creating the dolls and the family's ongoing debate over Algor's future. But Saramago makes up for the brief slow stretch with a stunning ending after the doll project crashes, when Algor becomes a resident of the Center and finds a shocking surprise in a cave unearthed beneath it. The characters are as finely crafted as Algor's pottery, and Saramago deserves special kudos for his one-dog canine chorus, a stray mutt named Found that Algor adopts as his emotional sounding board. Saramago has an extraordinary ability to make a complex narrative read like a simple parable. This remarkably generous and eloquent novel is another landmark work from an 80-year-old literary giant who remains at the height of his powers. (Nov.) Forecast: Saramago goes from strength to strength, and his readership continues to grow in the U.S. This novel should sell well initially and will be a staple backlist title. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.