“The Cave”
by José Saramago
Published: October 2003
ISBN: 0156028794

(Posted April 6th, 2004.)

This was very pleasant reading… like placing yourself on the couch as you would with a good friend (as opposed to more formal “company” :o).

Set in a generic “small town” on the outskirts of a growing “center”, this book follows the lives of three of the inhabitants. A father, a daughter and the daughter’s husband journey through the re/finding of their identity and purpose — individual, familial and distinct from the more ‘globally’ expanding one. (And, yes, to how many things could we apply this as a metaphor?)

José Saramago won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. His subjects are universal, both timely and timeless. The people he writes are very “human” and “real”. And, his writing style is seemingly one invention after another.

“Blindness” (an incredibly haunting book with a different way into many of the same questions as “The Cave”) was visceral. “The Cave” — breaking all grammatical rules we’ve ever learned — manages to express outer thought, inner thought and the equivalent in action and in relationship as I’ve never read before. Perhaps… allowing our natural structure to flow is exactly what permits the complexities and “multi-levelness” of “we as human beings living in society” to find their place.

I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this book. The writing and the style of writing alone are worth discovering.

“Couldn’t wait to get back to it” factor? 4 out of 5.