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Of
all the names you need to remember if you want to read a sparkling,
illuminating, intelligent and exciting novel, remember Portuguese
novelist Jose Saramago. Gunter Grass and Gabriel Garcia Marquez
are always mentioned at the forefront of accomplished international
novelists. Saramago should be mentioned as well. With the publication
of BLINDNESS in 1998, Saramago received the much-deserved Nobel
Prize. With that book, readers began to see that he is an amazing
author and now are looking back to his novels before BLINDNESS,
such as THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS CHRIST and THE STONE RAFT.
Saramago's first novel since BLINDNESS is ALL THE NAMES, a novel
of simple prose and intelligent ironies rich in thought.
"Apart from his first name, Jose, Senhor Jose also has surnames,
very ordinary ones, nothing extravagant, one from his father's side,
another from his mother's, as is normal, names legitimately transmitted,
as we could confirm in the Register of Births in the Central Registry
if the matter justified our interest and if the results of that
inquiry repaid the labour of merely confirming what we already know."
Senhor Jose is a timid and reclusive middle aged bachelor working
as a low-level bureaucrat in an unnamed Central Registry of Births,
Marriages, and Deaths. His only passion is collecting clippings
of famous people from the newspaper. Late at night, he sneaks into
the registry and makes copies of their birth certificates. He lives
in a house connected to the Registry's main building. His life is
spent recording, filing, and retrieving records from the Registry's
archives; he's been working with the records for 20 years. The reader
immediately feels some sense of pity for the man whose life revolves
around the lives of others.
One day Senhor Jose stumbles across a stray record of an unknown
36-year-old woman and his life suddenly changes, his obsession suddenly
changes. He needs to find out all he can about this woman. He needs
to know who she is, to flesh her out, to understand more about some
of the dates. This leads him on a path to breaking the rules with
more and more regularity --- forging official papers, breaking into
the building, removing records from the institution. But the Registrar,
his unnamed boss, a godlike figure whose name is spoken only in
whispers, is taking a personal interest in his lowly employee and
may discover Senhor Jose's misdeeds. And what of the woman? Will
he find her? And what will happen if or when he does?
Saramago writes with clarity and simplicity and lets the words work
their way into the reader like a warm summer tide upon a sandy beach.
The ironies, wittiness, and honesty all sweep up slowly and quietly,
whetting the mind's appetite for more. Most importantly, ALL THE
NAMES puts a name to our loneliness. It seeks to explain our need
to search for human companionship, however tenuous. It captures
an ordinary life and makes it blossom into something extraordinary,
letting the reader know that there are no ordinary people. Everyone
has something they live for, something they believe in, something
they love. They can't put a name to it, but it's there nonetheless.
--- Reviewed by Jonathan Shipley
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