The Lives of Things

May 14, 2012
This collection (first published in 1978) from the late Portuguese Nobel Prize for Literature-winner Saramago (The Cave) presents some of the author's early work. Here, the literary lion experiments with shorter, more inventive forms, and the results are lucid and impressive, if occasionally uneven. Political allegory and its frequent bedfellows (the absurd and the Kafkaesque) are easily discernible hereâin the excellent and unsettling "Things," we follow an anxiety-ridden civil servant living in a dystopian state in which objects begin behaving ominously. The story, wonderfully reminiscent of Gogol's "The Nose," opens with a nurse who must administer to a settee that has been overheatingâ"He prepare the syringe, suck in the contents of a large ampoule and briskly the needle into the settee." In "Embargo," a shortage of petrol and the attendant "panic, the hours of waiting, the endless queues of cars" causes a man's vehicle to ruthlessly immobilize him, like Gregor Samsa in the dawn of his metamorphoses vainly attempting to roll over. Though not every story is successfulâ"The Chair"'s exhausting fragmentation and heavy-handed politics may test some readers' patienceâSaramago's considerable talent is clearly manifest.

March 15, 2012
This slim collection of early, experimental stories represents a footnote on the career of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, who died in 2010. Originally published as a collection in 1978, these stories reflect the social conscience and penchant for elaborate allegory that would flourish in his celebrated novels, such as Blindness (1998). In the introduction, translator Giovanni Pontiero (who died in 1996) explains that half of the stories "might be described as political allegories evoking the horror and repression which paralysed Portugal under the harsh regime of Salazar." Since most American readers aren't all that familiar with Portugal's political situation of the 1960s, the opening "The Chair" might be particularly impenetrable without the brief context provided by the introduction, which alludes to "the dictator's dramatic departure from the political scene on 6 September 1968, when the deckchair in which he was sitting collapsed and the shock precipitated a brain haemorrhage." The story itself is oblique and matter of fact, minutely detailed, largely devoid of passion, punctuated by the exhortation, "Fall, old man, fall. See how your feet are higher than your head." In the other stories as well, characters are unnamed, mainly described by their social positions, as the late author spins parables about an oil embargo that leaves a man all but imprisoned in his car ("Embargo"), a society in which things stop working (doors, watches, buildings, entire streets) and even disappear ("Things") and the establishment of a cemetery that becomes "a city of the dead surrounded by four cities of living human beings" ("Reflux"). "The Centaur" reads most like a fable, yet it is also the most compelling story here, as the author shows the protagonist's divided nature, referring to the mythical creature as both horse and man, who "had learned how to curb the animal's impatience, sometimes opposing him with an upsurge of violence which clouded his thoughts or perhaps affected that part of his body where the orders coming from his brain clashed with the dark instincts nourished between his flanks. Though some of the stories work well on their own, the collection will mainly interest those already very familiar with the author and his novels.

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April 15, 2012
Originally published in Spanish as Object quase (1978), this book collects six of Saramago's early dalliances with short fiction. Though somewhat experimental in form and of course shorter than his novels (in some cases, much shorter; one story, Revenge, is a scant four pages long), his stories are nevertheless recognizably Saramago in their extended metaphors, long sentences, and moral sensibilities. The strongest of three more or less overtly political stories, The Chair describes in detached yet gripping detail the brain hemorrhage suffered by Portuguese dictator Salazar when he fell from his chair; similarly charged, the clever and claustrophobic Embargo portrays a car that forces its owner to pull into gas stations. Subtler and more enigmatic is The Centaur, an eloquent fable exploring notions of inner conflict and extinction. Readers new to Saramago may find Blindness (1995) or The Cave (2001) more accessible, but those who have read the master novelist's major works and are hungry for more will appreciate this selection's minor treasures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)