Fictional biography of Fernando Pessoa, and his relationship with his personified "heteronym", Ricardo Ries; and Ries' own relationships with Marcenda (the girl with the limp left arm) and Lydia (the maid). The book (like Raised From the Ground) has a lot of Portuguese history enriching the text throughout, using contemporary events and newspaper articles. A surreal and fascinating read. Here are some of the contents I have highlighted from the novel:
The quote, "The Redcoats have reached the straights".
Portuguese New Year tradition of throwing rubbish from upstairs windows.
Letter sent poste restante.
Adamastor, a personification of the Cape of Good Hope, symbolizing the dangers of the sea and the formidable forces of nature challenged and ultimately overcome by the Portuguese during the Age of Discovery.
Newspaper articles of the time; Spanish leading up to a civil war, Nazi Germany flying their zeppelin over Portugal, death of King George, new king Edward; Italians in Africa.
Pilgrimage to Fatima, planes dropping leaflets advertising Bovril.
Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll in the Thirty Nine Steps.
Portugal having a mock air raid in preparation for World War Two.
Adamastor waiting for Doris to arrive while Thetis sings.
Statue of Luis De Cameos.
Earth quake.
Impressed with the German youth movement, the Portuguese considering their own with SS ("Serve Salazar") on their belts.
Air plane crash, death of General Sanjurjo en route to Spain. General Francisco Franco declaration to desire order, the Spanish army task of Redemption, Moroccan soldiers arriving, a governing junta set up in Burgos, rumours of a confrontation in Madrid between the army and the forces. Population of Badajoz taking arms resisting the military advance.
"Tragic Sense of Life" by Miguel de Unamuno. ( )

I really struggled with this one. There isn't much plot: Ricardo Reis is basically depressed, largely giving up on life in his last year. His downward spiral was hard to read about. We know almost nothing about his past life, his younger years in Portugal or his later years in Brazil. His intellectual and philosophical interactions with the ghost of the recently deceased renowned Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa are highlights.

Interestingly, I did really warm up to Saramago's style of writing, which includes long paragraphs--sometimes relevant, sometimes digressions--flashes into the imagination that might seem like they are real events in the moment, and paragraphs of dialog unbroken by line breaks or identifying tags. As with Hemingway, it can be easy to lose track of who is speaking until a name or a subject startles you into the realization that you may have misattributed some thoughts--though that only happened a few times in the conversations between Reis and Pessoa. When Reis really has no intellectual or conversational equal, not even in the most exciting portion of the book when he's called in for interrogation by the police--it's rarely difficult to tell his dialog apart from that of the hotel manager, or his mistress Lydia the hotel maid, or sort-of-love the far-too-young and Marcenda.

Reis and Pessoa, who knew each other in Portugal in the past, are both poets--the former on the side of his doctoring career, the latter full-time. I wish that this edition had an forward or afterword explaining a few things for clueless English-language readers; it was sheer, lucky accident that I happened to pick up a book of poetry in Portugal, flip to the section of Pessoa's works, and find that "Ricardo Reis" is actually one of the many pseudonyms under which he wrote. Unlike most authors who use pen names, Pessoa gave Reis and each of his pseudonyms distinct personalities to reflect the different styles of writing used by each--according to ye olde Wikipedia, he called them "heteronyms". I'm not sure how much of Reis' personality was fleshed out by Pessoa and how much invented by Saramago. I can only assume that the snippets of Reis' poems that appear throughout the book are indeed from poems written under Pessoa's Reis heteronym.

I'm glad I finished the book, even if the story really wasn't to my taste. There's plenty of 1930s history on the edges, with wealthy refugees from Spain and direct talk of Franco's takeover, rumblings of discontent with Salazar's regime in the Portuguese navy, gobs of pro-fascist propaganda and events, and at the same time ongoing cultural events such as New Years celebrations and religious services in Fatima. There's just also a lot of very, very dull downtime with a shallow character whose depths seem to consist of the nothingness and indifference that I sometimes grapple with myself. ( )

This book blends magical realism, historical fiction, and literary fiction. The title character, Ricardo Reis, a doctor and poet, returns to Lisbon, Portugal, after living in Brazil for sixteen years. He stays at a hotel, encounters two women, is questioned by local authorities, and is visited by the spirit of recently deceased poet Fernando Pessoa, an historic figure. The year is 1935 to 1936, and the backdrop is the rise of the fascist movement in Europe.

This is a philosophical novel, filled with musings on life, love, art, literature, politics, religion, history, and death. It is character driven and the plot is sparse. The protagonist seems to be sleep-walking through life, withdrawing into his personal world, avoiding reality. He strikes up a relationship with a woman he considers beneath his station and longs for a much-younger woman for whom he writes poetry. He appears oblivious to the political situation taking place around him, though he reads the papers and recounts the headlines of the day.

Saramago is a keen observer of human nature. He inserts his wit and clever observations about life. He speaks directly to the reader, at points even referencing the reading process and preferences:
“A chambermaid appeared, but it wasn’t Lydia. Ah, Carlota, light a heater and put it in the lounge. Whether such details are indispensable or not for a clear understanding of this narrative is something each of us must judge for himself, and the judgment will vary according to our attention, mood, and temperament. There are those who value broad ideas above all, who prefer panoramas and historical frescoes, whereas others appreciate the affinities and contrasts between small brush strokes.”

Saramago’s style is not for everyone. He employs long paragraphs, stretching over many pages. Dialogue is embedded within these paragraphs. For me, this type structure is hard on the eyes, as it provides no natural stopping places for reflection (and this book requires lots of reflection). I have to say though, I found it kept my interest and I learned quite a bit about Portuguese history and literature.

Memorable quotes:

“Clearly man is trapped in his own labyrinth.”

“One reaches a point where there is nothing but hope, and that is when we discover that hope is everything.”

“Man, in the final analysis, is an irrational creature.”

“There is nothing more pointless in this world than regret.”

“One cannot resist time, we are within it and accompany it, nothing more.”

“Poets often begin at the horizon, for that is the shortest path to the heart.” ( )

An intriguing book. There is more going on in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis than the simple tale of a man returning to his native Portugal after sixteen years in Brazil. More than a tenuously-romantic relationship between this man and the chambermaid Lydia at the hotel he stays in. More than the crush he develops on a young woman, Mercenda, whose left arm is paralyzed. His brief, threatening interview with the Lisbon police. His ongoing conversations with the dead poet Fernando Pessoa. But what?

Jose Saramago's novel is full of small mysteries left unexplained: why Reis was exiled in Brazil – if in fact he was exiled, or merely chose to live there; why he returns to Lisbon; why the police are interested in a nondescript, middle-aged doctor who spends his days wandering the city and reading the newspaper. Even when Reis has indeed died (as foretold by the title), the book leaves the reader not surprised by the suddenness of the death but rather by the lack of a cause. If in fact it was a death, for the name Ricardo Reis is a pseudonym the actual, living Pessoa used, giving rise to the question of whether Reis himself is a real person in the novel or merely another ghost of Pessoa.

Saramago writes in long sentences and lengthy paragraphs that race along like wind-blown detritus. Yet there is a deliberate dichotomy between the pace of his sentences and the action they contain. They refuse to follow literary conventions – speech is not denoted by quotation marks, nor even broken into separate paragraphs when the speaker changes. The narrative tense shifts, sometimes mid-sentence, and the unnamed narrator often interrupts with his own commentary. At times you are not sure whether the action described is a figment of Reis' imagination or real events. But none of this is distracting; rather, it adds to the surreal atmosphere of the novel. It leaves the reader wondering what the novel means, whether it is supposed to mean anything.

The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis is a stylistic departure from Blindness, his other novel I highly recommend. My translation was copyrighted seven years after the original publication, has no foreword, barely credits the translator, and has only the briefest of biographies of the Nobel Prize recipient on the back cover. This minimalist approach downplays the greatness of this book. ( )

Bókin The Year of the Death of Richardo Reis eftir portúgalska nóbelsverðlaunaskáldið Jose Saramago fjallar nákvæmlega um það sem titillinn segir. Sagan hefst á því þegar Reis kemur aftur heim til Portúgal eftir sjálfskipaða útlegð í Brasilíu til nokkurra ár. Hann snýr aftur eftir að hafa lesið um andlát vinar síns, Pessoa, og hann á síðan eftir að hitta þennan vin sinn reglulega og spjalla við hann enda er sagan skrifuð í með töfra-raunsæi sem Saramago nýtir sér til að skoða einstaka hluti út frá öðru sjónarhorni. Pessoa og Reis tengjast sterkum böndum enda er annar þeirra höfundarnafn hins.
Saramago sýnir sterklega stéttskipt samfélag og hvernig íbúarnir búa saman og tengjast í hugsun og orði. Fasisminn í Evrópu er vaxandi og síðari heimsstyrjöldin dregur nær.
Hann gerir þetta vel og innsýnin sem hann veitir í samfélagið sem hann skapar er eftirminnileg og heillandi. ( )