The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis - Jose Saramago

A quiet novel from the Nobel Prize winning Portuguese author. The protagonist, Dr. Ricardo Reis, returns to his native city of Lisbon after 16 years of self-imposed exile to Brazil. A poet friend has died. He spends a rather uneventful year in decline, talking to the ghost of his dead friend, mostly living in a hotel where he reads newspapers, wanders the streets, falls in love with a young guest and, of course, sleeps with a maid. With a mixture of magical realism, historical references (it's 1936, war in Europe is eminent and wealthy Spanish refugees slowly clog the city) and careful prose this story has potential to be a captivating and beautiful read. Unfortunately the plot is so stationary in its subtlety that the novel leaves instead an impression of painful tedium, which festers and grows to a near spite by the end when, as throughout, nothing happens. His death, portrayed as his taking his coat and following his dead friend to the graveyard, is a good demonstration of the book as a whole: an old man's detouring, distracted, procrastinated walk to the grave. For readers in reflective, time-abundant situations (patient old people) or academics where each minute detail can be reconstructed and massaged until it releases whatever point is to be found, this book may be good fodder for your arrogance. Otherwise, well worth skipping in a world so full of nourishing drive-thru wisdom.

Um?
2.5 out of 5
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