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Title: The Cave by Jose Saramago, Margaret Costa ISBN: 0151004145 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.62
Rating: 5
Summary: Amazing Allegorical Tale
Comment: Jose Saramago is, quite possibly, the best living author. It is strange that I have such a varying reaction to his books: some I find fascinating ("The Cave", "Blindness") and others I find long-winded and difficult ("All the Names"). As with most authors, this can usually be attributed to the characterizations found in the books. Saramago's style remains the same - long sentences with tons of commas. It's endearing when it's working.
I feel no need to summarize the plot, for you can read that summary directly above. And I do not wish to wreck the ending by revealing what this allegory addresses (it directly links to a very old allegory by a very well-known and respected philosopher). What I will say is that this book is simply priceless.
I cannot understand the opinion of the reviewer who gave it three stars - attempting to find fault with the factual nature of the story is silly. I suggest that reader seek out a different author. Saramago is one of the last masters of the fable. Try reading his "The Tale of the Unknown Island", or "Blindness". He is not concerned with sci-fi or alternate-future reality; he is concerned with giving us strong characterizations, internal monologues, and dialogues which lead to a conclusion he wishes us to see. It is a waste of time to discuss whether or not "El Centro" is an accurate depiction of a monolithic shopping center. It is the foil on which the tale is built. Stories must at times be melodramatic to make a point. Certainly "El Centro" is a bit fanciful, but it is also hauntingly familiar.
This is the fastest I've ever read a book by Saramago, and I enjoyed every second of it. Cipriano Algor is a strong character (as is his dog Found) who will remain with me.
I heartily recommend the book to anyone who enjoys a good anti-unification tale. Unification provides comfort and security ... but at what cost?
Rating: 5
Summary: Another Masterpiece from on of our greatest modern authors
Comment: It is good to see that Jose Saramago is not willing to rest on his laurels after winning the Nobel Prize. This book is a beautiful and intricately written as Blindness and All the Names. As one who has read all of his books, I am astonised by his writing power. The key to savoring Saramago is to read very slowly, savoring every word and idea that appears.
This novel like All the Names addresses the challenge modern man has in connecting to other human beings in a world that is becoming increasingly homogenized,the confict between city and country, and the role of women and poor in the world.
The heart of this novel is one Cipriano Algor, a potter who loses an exclusive conract with the Center. The Center is Saramago's symbol for the globalized economy as in exist today. An economy that has widenened the gulf between the rich and the poor, and where one day can bring someone from subsitence to homelessness.
But Saramago does more than attack globalization. He creates vivid, living characters who struggle with age, who experience the ecstatic joy of creating ceramic figurines, who argue and make up, who are human and wholly believable.
Rating: 3
Summary: OK, but not Saramago's best
Comment: I had the honor of meeting José Saramago at a book-signing in Lisbon's Chiado district shortly after he won the Nobel Prize in 1998. At the time, I wondered if receiving the prize would cause one of my favorite novelists to sit back and write nothing worthy of note, or nothing at all.
Fortunately, "The Cave" bears the earmarks of earnestness, diligence, and love of the Portuguese language that characterize Saramago's earlier works. But as a novel it's disappointing.
The central theme of "The Cave" is that a giant, impersonal, and arrogantly managed shopping center, the octopean Centro, is extending its tentacles and squeezing the commercial life out of the region. The main character, Cipriano Algor, an artisan potter living in a rural hamlet and eking out a living selling dishes to the Centro, is one of the shopping complex's victims. The Centro treats its suppliers ruthlessly: work with us on one-sided terms or we'll dispense with you. And we'll dispense with you anyway when you're no longer useful to us. Disastrous for Algor, the Centro no longer wants to sell his stoneware; its customers prefer cheaper and less breakable plastic tableware.
Thus, much of the novel consists of the petty indignities the nasty Centro visits on the desperate and humiliated Algor, a situation complicated by the fact that Marçal Gacho, Algor's live-in son-in-law, is a security guard for the shopping center and wants to move there with his wife Marta. (The Centro contains an apartment complex.)
For all these facts, the plot is thin, and it's stifled by overlong narratives, asides, and commentaries that dominate the novel. "The Cave" is like an opera with much singing and little action. Indeed, few dramatic events disturb the novel's languor until the final 35 or so pages of the 350-page-long Portuguese version. And there's little that's compelling about Cipriano Algor, Marçal Gacho, Marta, or the family dog, Achado (Found). They're all without depth. Algor is a stiff, diffident and lonely widower whose inability to act on his interest in Isaura, the widow across town, exasperates the reader. Oddly, Saramago relies heavily on the family dog for character development, extolling Achado's virtues. But this peculiar device does not succeed. In the end, Achado's ordinary canine behavior fails to inspire interest in itself or to illuminate its owners' personalities.
And incongruously for such uneducated people, the characters often speak the King's Portuguese. (As alluded to, I read the book in Portuguese and that criticism may not apply to Margaret Jull Costa's English translation.)
"The Cave" contains a number of trite and cranky commentaries. They stand in unfortunate contrast to the acute sketches of human behavior and universal dilemmas that enliven other Saramago novels. Algor, his family, and his dog are portrayed as the salt of the earth, rather like the Joads in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." The conflict between Algor and the arrogant Centro is an allegory for Saramago's dislike of globalization and the liberalization of the world economy--a dislike he made clear in 1998, when he argued, "Injustices multiply, inequalities become worse, ignorance grows, misery spreads. The same schizophrenic humanity able to send instruments to [Mars] to study the composition of its rocks witnesses indifferently the deaths of millions from hunger. . . . Governments fail to do [their duty], because they don't know how to, because they can't, or because they don't want to. Or because those who effectively govern the world don't let them: the multinational and intercontinental corporations whose power, absolutely undemocratic, has reduced almost to nothing what once remained of the ideal of democracy."
In sum, Saramago stands with the antiglobalization protestors who generated datelines from Seattle, Quebec City, and Genoa. His worldview may stem from the degrading poverty and oppression his grandparents experienced in rural Portugal (see his Nobel Prize acceptance speech). Yet if Saramago were less rigid, "The Cave" might acknowledge that the same liberalization that created the Centro permits Algor to leave behind its nouveau-riche customers and haughty management. He could sell instead to visitors to Portugal who want to buy handmade stoneware, or over the Internet to collectors in Montreal, Adelaide, and Sapporo.
Algor, then, is simply trying to sell in the wrong place, and if the Centro rebuffs him it points more to flaws in the Centro's marketing strategy than to the intrinsic cruelty "The Cave" suggests. Why should the Centro waste shelf space on relatively unprofitable merchandise?
Moreover, Saramago's portrayal of the Centro is unrealistic and shows a lack of awareness of the impermanence of economic hegemony. Even well-run companies face reversals. In today's financial news (November 8, 2002), McDonald's is reported to be withdrawing from three countries entirely and closing about 175 restaurants in 10 more. Saramago presents the Centro as omnipotent and timeless. But its bad relations with its suppliers would probably doom it in reality.
It's worth noting that Portugal, like Ireland, has been a European economic success story. Accompanying its economic growth, new shopping centers like Lisbon's Amoreiras and Columbo malls have emerged. They have been very popular, and have coincided with a decline in some traditional business districts. Yet those who know Portugal may agree that the country hardly seems economically, socially or culturally the worse for these changes, Saramago's implicit lament notwithstanding.
My recommendation: if you're a Saramago fan, you may enjoy "The Cave." But if you're new to him, start by reading one of his better novels, like "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis," "Blindness," or "All the Names."
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Title: Baudolino by Umberto Eco, William Weaver ISBN: 0151006903 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: All the Names by Jose Saramago, Margaret Costa ISBN: 0156010593 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Blindness by José Saramago ISBN: 0156007754 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Stone Raft by José Saramago ISBN: 0156004011 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: June, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides ISBN: 0374199698 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 04 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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