Death With Interruptions
Jose Saramago
Genres : death, speculative fiction, humor, satire,2021-read
Rating 5/5 💕💕
Loved it!! "Death" is conquered. By Love!! This is an abnormally endearing book. Its ripe with impossible hypothetical possibilities and they are just mind blowing! The reader along with the citizens of a lucky/unlucky country are taken for a ride by Death which wants to test human fragility. Then Death comes up with some ideas of her own - because she can and who is there to question or deter her? Yeah! Its a very hilarious write up and the comical timing is so apt! I didn't anticipate this to be a love story but that's what it has turned out to be and a pretty touching one too - in its authenticity, honesty and it just had my knees go weak. I waited with baited breath as to how it would end - for how many can have a successful love affair with Death?
Little bit into the story. For a brief period of seven months, death takes a break. People of a certain country in question don't see any deaths. Naturally, initially there are many celebrations but as time passes, issues and crisis in different forms glare back at them. Population control becomes a major problem. People who are beyond the point of treatment hang in suspension - not dying but not fully alive either - a burden on their dear ones. Major issues are faced by the communities of undertakers, funeral homes, grave diggers and insurance companies. Also the church has no word to say in escape. New organizations like the maphia crop up taking over the responsibilities of surreptitiously crossing the near-dead bodies across border and burying them. As suddenly as death has resorted to disrupt an established status quo, it ends it by sending a letter to the government heads[this is just how it has happened in Jose's other masterpiece novel, Blindness]. In change, along with resuming her usual job of killing and claiming lives, Death is going to be sending a letter to each person who is going to die a week ahead so that they could fix all their matters and set them in order. This creates another chaos situation and everyone decides to invite death to a conference. But they cant find her - obviously! One day after signing off a set of letters and sending them off to their destinations with a snap of her fingers, Death finds a violet letter returned to her unopened. She fails to deliver it to the target thrice and gets intrigued. She trails him for a while and falls into a binding infatuation over his musical talents. She makes a plan to close the case of fixing his missed death in a week. Disguising as a pretty woman she enters his life but then what happens? Does she deliver him the letter there by claiming his life? Does she let him live now - and there by forever? What course does their blind attraction and love take?
I liked this book very much. Jose Saramago is an incredibly imaginative person which I figured after reading my first book of his - Blindness. I highly recommend this to all good book lovers even though for the first half it is a bit dry and reads like an endless monologue..it moves into really interesting territory once Death enters the picture!
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