Latest Review: "The Lives of Things" by José Saramago

The latest review to our Reviews Section is a piece by me— Aleksandra Fazlipour — on José Saramago’s The Lives of Things, which is available from Verso Books.

Here’s a bit of my review:

Imagine a world where objects, utensils, machines, or installations (OUMIs) take on lives of their own, independent of their owners. A world where skin grafted to the palms of our hands identifies us as a particular category, A-Z, that grants us absolute power over others (those below us) or renders us perfectly subservient (to those above us). Now imagine a world—perhaps a different world, or maybe the same as before—where cars in effect solder themselves to their drivers, demanding more gas. And then another (or again, perhaps the same), where chairs fall in stop-motion triggering irreparable brain damage in those who sit in them, where the two parts of a centaur’s body (human and horse) are constantly in dispute with one another. Sometimes subtly horrifying and always appropriately absurd and comedic when the situation demands it, José Saramago drops us in to those worlds in The Lives of Things. Or that one world, depending on how you look at it . . . because the settings Saramago creates are not that far of a departure from the world we live in.

At times it is difficult to wade through the nonchalant, matter-of-fact, thickly piled on descriptions the Nobel Prize-winning author utilizes. His prose is richly colorful, descriptive and frequently verges on shocking without being excessive. It is easy to fall into the trap of reading the same paragraph over and over again, luxuriating in the gorgeous, strange yet precise word choice but without being stuck. Giovanni Pontiero does a laudable job translating Saramago’s discourse from Portuguese to English without sacrificing any of the sly humor or the lush detailed description.

Click here to read the entire review.