Death with Interruptions [Hardcover]

Here is another one of Saramago's curious novels on the big metaphysical issues of the day. First, he gave us a tour de force in "Blindness" to contemplate as to how we might address our social responsibilities if an inexplicably wide-scale disaster happened. Now, years later, he strikes with another hypothetically absurd situation of cosmic proportions that challenges his readers to wrestle with its implications and outcomes. The question here is how might one respond if they learned that death had suddenly decided to take a holiday and people could live forever in their present frames? Wowser! For over two-hundred pages Saramago weaves a compelling story around this one event where a community learns that death, personified in the feminine, is no more. All bets are off as to when people will die; funerals are no more; hospital wards fill up with aging and decrepit patients; and people's disposable income is greatly reduced in having to take care of their elderly parents. Saramago includes in his narrative some arbitrary measures that government and local citizenry take to cope with this apocalyptic crisis. One is the decision to take the aged and infirmed across the border to another country where death is still `alive' and `kicking', and have them die naturally. This arrangement, a throwback to the fourteenth century when the state allowed individual contractors to haul away the near-dead to charnel houses during the many plagues, involves the civic officials linking up with a criminal element (maphiosi) to transport the permanently dying. The story finally gets around to death deciding that perhaps it is time to change her attitude towards life and become re-engaged with her customers on a different level: human love rather than separation and fear. Her taking up with a local cellist who is dying from cancer is one of those typically radical moves that Saramago introduces to his novels to raise the level of meaning from despair to hope. By doing this, Saramago might be reminding his readers that the time has come in civilization to see death as an occasion to express personal care and affection for one another. Now, isn't that a novel idea in a world trying to cut itself off from the terrible impact of death.

First off, I'm a long-time Saramago fan, in fact he's my favorite contemporary author. He has an experimental style of writing which is described here in detail: [...]
If you don't like that style, if it turns you off, then you should not be reading this book, because you are fixating on something which, if anything, contributes to the flow of his storytelling. Although, admittedly, whenever I finish one of his books, I use a lot of commas when I write for a short time afterward.

"Death with Interruptions" is now on my list of favorite books of all time. Saramago constantly puts himself into his own characters in rather obvious ways, and they tend to end up getting laid, and this book is no exception. He also pokes fun, screwing around with his satirical style in whole new ways. My favorite example of this would have to be how death (lower-case "D") writes a letter to the people of the anonymous country apologizing for ceasing to kill for a period of seven months, and promising a new system of death by which people are notified a week before their due date. Newspapers analyzing the letter, which is read by the presiding government, refer to death's writing style, which lacks proper capitalization and punctuation, as amateurish. Death then responds again defending her writing style, and threatening to hasten one newspaper editor's due date if he doesn't de-capitalize the "D" in her name. The rather vague system behind death, which becomes slowly more apparent, is that there are "deaths" for each and every species, and for humans there is in fact a different one for every country, so when death decides to stop death from occurring, this only takes place in that one country.
The first half of the book is the country's reaction as a whole to the ending of all death, particularly when people begin making for the country's border to allow their dying to finally move on to the next life. A criminal "maphia" springs up to take over the transporting of the dying to their deaths, and begins to co-operate with the government, but all this falls apart when death decides to recommence death, with a violet-colored letter warning all people a week before they are due to die.
There are a million ways Saramago could have gone with this, as far as societal reactions, but after this point, as in many Saramago novels, the basis of the novel takes a complete twist, as death finds she cannot seem to send the violet letter of one 50y.o. concert celoist. She cases him, figuring out who he is and planning on how best to attack, and finally she takes form and wanders into his life, which is devoid of any company but for his extremely remarkable dog. So once again Saramago switches from the epic to the very personal, as death discovers who she truly is, and the celoist discovers a change of pace in his very carefully paced life.

This book is very accessible as far as Saramago books go, and at times feels as if it was written specifically for the reader. The views on government and organized religion are preemptively cynical, but because of this lack of pushiness, they seem very easy to accept- easier than in "Seeing" or "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ", respectively.
I would absolutely recommend this epic tale of corruption and sad-but-rewarding love.

As usual, Saramago does a wonderful job answering the ever nagging question, "What if---?" Saramago takes a holisitc view and shows us what would happen to society (religion, politics, the family, the self, the foreignors, the locals, the aged, the youth, and everyone in betweem) if Death decided to take a break. What happens when Death goes on vacation? HIGHLY recommended.