| Mary and I both thought this was a wonderful book, about the life of a clerk in a city registry of births, marriages, and deaths. The writing is unusual and interesting, and the story is symbolic. Mary's book group read it, and I read it because they liked it so well. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly said, "Saramago relates these events in finely honed prose pervaded with irony, but also playful, mocking and witty. Alternately farcical, macabre, surreal and tragic, this mesmerizing narrative depicts the loneliness of individual lives and the universal need for human connection even as it illuminates the fine line between the living and the dead." |