The Cave

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Another cracker from Saramago - Rated
Saramago's surreal novels are a joy. This is probably not quite as good as "blindness" and "all the names" but still enchantingly strange.

Solid But Not Outstanding - Rated
Nobel Prize meets The Matrix in Saramago's parable of modern capitalism, which urges the reader to reject the materialist worldview increasingly embraced around the world and forge their own path. The only other book of his I've read is Blindness (which is an outstanding work), and this novel shares that one's setting of an unnamed country in the near future. Outside an unnamed city, an old man makes pottery, which he brings into town to tell at "The Center"-a kind of megalith mall which is slowly enveloping the city around it. A combination Walmart and Mall of the Americas, The Center sells everything one needs (one of their creepy slogans is "We Have What You Need, But We Prefer You Need What We Have), and houses apartments, amusements, and everything one needs to enjoy life, including simulated snow storms. Almost everyone aspires to live in the Center, so as to be closer to all these attract/distractions.

The framework of the sparse story is that The Center cancels their standing order with the potter, forcing him to confront his dying trade. Without any other market to sell to, he and his daughter try to convince The Center to buy ceramic dolls instead. When they agree and order 1,200 dolls, the duo must race to mass produce this new item in their old-fashioned workshop. An additional tension is added by the daughter's husband, who wants them all to move to The Center, where he works as a security guard. Other subplots include the appearance of a stray dog and a local widow's interest in the potter. The story is a something restrained critique of consumerist culture, with sharp digs and jabs here and there, and an overarching reference to Plato's Cave (if you don't know what that is, you'll want to read up on it online), but Saramago seems somewhat more interested in the small family and how they interact. It's a warm portrait of a group of people struggling to keep their heads above water in a mildly dystopian future. Especially endearing are the passages written from the dog's perspective.

The satire of The Center is pretty straightforward, with its control of what gets bought and sold, creepily cheery slogans, and officials who are masters of doublespeak (one line from a buyer goes something like "There is no secret of the bee, but we know what it is."). What is somewhat interesting (as Saramago is well known Communist) is that the same satirical points can (and have) been made against planned economies such as that of the former Soviet Union. The ending is appropriately ambiguous, leaving open the question as to whether or not there is any future in such a world.

It should be noted that the writing style is very distinctive, with little punctuation, no quote marks to delineate speech versus thought, no breaks to indicate who the speaker is, and paragraphs that run for pages and pages. You're either going to love it or hate it in that it'll either make for labored reading or complete immersion reading (our book group split right down the middle on this). Altogether, it's a solid bit of craft, it's not as brilliant as Blindness.