Small Memories [Hardcover]

Famed novelist Jose Saramago, in one of his last works, takes us on a dreamy, rambling trip through his memories of childhood and adolescence. He grew up in a small village, but lived for many years in Lisbon as well. He shares with us the rustic atmosphere of his birthplace, his wise but unlettered grandparents, his child's understanding of history, his introduction to letters, his discovery of --girls, and much much else. Some of his memories are tinged with pride, others with eternal embarrassment, shame and guilt. On occasion he treats the reader to a tiny glimpse of his creative process--how some incident or other became the nexus for one of his great novels.

There's no plot, just a collection of poignant little vignettes strung together in no particular order. Fortunately, the author includes punctuation and even quotation marks, unlike in his great novels. The book concludes with some precious family photographs. If you've read any of the great man's works, better yet, if you're a fan of his writing, you won't want to miss out on these few pages of meeting the man himself. I enjoyed Small Memories and recommend it highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

Small Memories is certainly something that handles small matters, both in the nature of the memories as well as in the size of the book. I found that in some respects it certainly has some redeemable qualities, but in others I didn't really care for what I was reading.

The cons are that you get zero insight into the adult Saramago. What you get instead are small clipped memories, ending just as quickly as each one began, from his childhood. I couldn't help but wait for that aha moment where he finally turned his childhood into something that would help understand his life better. Instead you are given the insight into the life of a poor family growing up in Portugal. Additionally I couldn't help but be slightly annoyed with his constant reference to "that may not quite be how it happened", "this memory may never have happened at all", to "I might not be remembering that person exactly how it happened". His constant reference to the possibilities that everything he is telling us could be completely false devalues the value of a memoir such as this.

The pros are that you get a nice view into the life and times of the peasant class growing up in a pre World War II time. How he travelled, how he ate, how he lived, how he interacted with other families. It is rather eye opening in that respect, so there is some worth behind a memoir that is nothing more than fragmented memories pieced together that ultimately have little connection with one another. I can't help but be impressed by how he writes and look forward to reading some of his works, but this very small book did little to show me who Saramago was. If you feel you need to purchase this book, certainly wait for the paperback addition since the 100+ pages isn't worth spending the money on a hardback.

2.5 stars.

Although Jose Saramago's memoir of his childhood, SMALL MEMORIES, is short, it contains many moving passages. I had decided that it was basically musings of a great writer-- BLINDNESS is a book I would take on an island--who was in his twilight and that his muse for the most part had left him. Then I came upon his description of his beloved grandfather (and wished I could read Portugese) that is as good as anything I can remember reading: "He is a man like many others on this earth, in this world, perhaps an Einstein crushed beneath a mountain of impossibilities, a philosopher, a great illiterate writer. Something he could never be."

Saramago's remembrance of his grandmother is just as good: "There you were, grandma, sitting on the sill outside your house, open to the vast, starry night, to the sky of which you knew nothing and through which you would never travel, to the silence of the fields and the shadowy trees, and you say, with all the serenity of your ninety years and the fire of an adolescence never lost: `The world is so beautiful, it makes me sad to think I have to die.'"

Poor by the world's standards and from a family of illiterates, Saramago recounts his falling in love with language and literature to become, against all odds, one of the great writers of all time.

SMALL MEMORIES is in short a little treasure.