A bald satire of governmental bodies and their wild, erroneous inefficiency, Seeing is in turns funny, inspiring, mystical, and a bit devastating. Without any prior organization, 87% of the voters of the fictional country (Portugal) cast a blank vote at the presidential election. The government, convinced there must be a conspiracy, removes itself from the city, leaving the citizens (traitors? conspirators? insurgents? ingrates?) to fend for themselves under a state of siege. An awkward series of events follows as the various government ministers attempt to solve the problem, (as they see it) while only bringing more pain and suffering upon the people, who all the while act calmly and normally.

The absence of paragraph breaks for dialogue and the frequent use of commas where periods are expected make the text run on and on in a way that takes some getting used to. It does not, strangely enough, hinder the storytelling, but in fact propels it onward. Every now and then I had to double check to see who was speaking, but on the whole, I felt that this strange method of punctuation actually helped me as a reader to experience the story swath by swath instead of line by line, or word by word.

Nevertheless, I still felt that the story was unnecessarily disjointed. It didn't seem to know for sure where it was going, and it seemed to allude too much to the earlier book, Blindness. An interesting read, but I can't give it more than 3 stars. ( )

Just like "Blindness" (one of his recent books), this book by Jose Saramago is another masterpiece. Long (up to a page!) sentences, no name for characters, but so compelling that you just cannot put it down. There are references to "Blindness" in this book, the events are happening in the same town. ( )

On election day in an unnamed capital city, rain pours down beginning in the early morning hours and continues well into the afternoon, a cause of concern for those working at the polls. Will anyone bother to show up during the deluge? Should the election be postponed? Under the orders of the government, the polls remain open, and finally, toward late afternoon, hundreds of people throng to the polling stations and cast their ballots. The government should be happy with the unprecedented show of national pride, but when the ballots are counted, more than 70% are blank.

In their bewilderment, the government does everything it can to figure out what's happening: sending spies out among the citizens, questioning and imprisoning those who case blank ballots, declaring a state of siege, imposing a curfew. When nothing seems to work, the government pulls up stakes and flees the city.

But in their determination to lay blame on someone for this show of rebellion, the prime minister learns of a woman who, during a mysterious bout of blindness which affected the entire country, somehow managed not to suffer the same blindness. She must be behind the mass blank balloting, and the prime minister sets out to discredit her.

--

When I first picked up this sequel to José Saramago's "Blindness", I wondered if it was necessary to have read "Blindness" in order to follow along in "Seeing". The story in the latter took place four years after the plague of white blindness, but only vague references were made to that first story. Yet, about two-thirds through, the main group of characters -- the survivors -- all appear, switching the focus of the story. But, surprisingly, I didn't think it necessary to have read the first book. The majority of characters in Seeing who may have been present during the blindness of the first book, don't know what happened to the group of survivors, and this "blindness" of sorts allows the reader understand the government's motives a bit more.

At it's most effective, "Seeing" tells a tale of how humans react to change. On one end of the spectrum, Saramago provides a satirical view of a government taking things to the extreme, of overreacting to a possible change of public opinion rather than attempting to understand what caused the change. The fear of losing control overrides logic, as in the case of the prime minister who needs to find a single person to blame for something out of his control -- in this case, resulting in very dire circumstances. At the opposite end, those remaining in the capital go on with their lives. A strike by the street cleaners is thwarted by the many housewives who take to the street with brooms to clean their own patches of the city. When those who didn't cast blank ballots are forced into returning to the capital, believing that their apartments and omes have been looted (thanks to government broadcasts), they are welcomed back by those who remained in the city and shown that everything is as they left it. Two very different reactions and outcomes to the same events: fear on the one hand, which doesn't allow for moving forward, and acceptance on the other.

I've now read three novels by Nobel laureate José Saramago, and two things stand out in each of them. First, one paragraph may last for four to five pages, mixing dialogue from more than two people and throwing in the author's own commentary. Surprisingly, it sounds more daunting than it actually is. I did find myself paying closer attention to the words in order to determine who was speaking, but looking back, I remember more of the story. Maybe it's just me....

Second, something mysterious seems to spark the story into action, and the origins are never explained. In "Blindness" -- the novel preceeding Seeing -- the entire country develops a strange white blindness; in "The Stone Raft", the Iberian Peninsula mysteriously separates from the rest of Europe and floats away. for those two novels, the mysterous works because those events aren't the main focus of the stories; the stories are more about how the characters react and survive under unknown circumstances. In Seeing, it's almost the same thing with the populace suddenly arriving en masse to vote, the procession of unmanned houselights that follows the government as it leaves the city. Even members of the government comment that something unnatural maybe happening, but by the end of the story, it's never explained. And to me, this was the one story in which that explanation felt necessary because it was alluded to so much by many characters.

"Seeing" is a fine book to read, and I highly recommend both it and its precursor, "Blindness". ( )

Not as compelling as Blindness (to which it is something of a sequel) was, but perhaps more timely, what with recent events and an upcoming election. I found the main premise of the book difficult to buy into, but it still seemed to contain a lot of worthwhile commentary on politics and human nature. You know... I wrote that before I finished it. I didn't like the end of the book at all and would now no longer recommend it. Stop with Blindness. Really. ( )

The sequel to “Blindness,” “Seeing” is slow at the beginning, but picks up nicely when we finally reunite with the main characters from the previous book. The main character was sympathetic, but my favorite parts were the descriptions of buttered toast. They made my mouth water. ( )