The Novels of José Saramago: Echoes from the Past, Pathways into the Future (review)

Although most of José Saramago's novels have been translated into English, monographs in English about the Portuguese Nobel Prize laureate are scarce in comparison, for instance, to what is available in German or Italian. In recent years, several essay collections have been published: Anna Klobucka edited a special issue for the journal Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies (2001); Harold Bloom edited José Saramago (2005); and finally, Adriana Alves de Paula Martins and Mark Sabine co-edited In Dialogue with José Saramago (2006). Despite the impressive range of articles on the Portuguese novelist in circulation, there is an enormous lack of monographs on Saramago available to the English-speaking academia, to which David Frier's book is therefore an essential contribution.

Surprisingly, considering the author's declared intention to present a study about fourteen novels by Saramago, the book is divided into only two chapters. However this minimalist structure works due to the extremely well documented and knowledgeable writing of David Frier, which provides a thorough analysis not only of what could be considered Saramago's most important works but also of more recent texts.

The Introduction intelligently merges Saramago's biography with his publications, presenting a complete critical reading of his novels as a whole alongside bibliography available about the author. By showing how what Saramago wrote is intrinsically connected with his life, his ideals and his country – his links with the Alentejo, the affiliation with the Communist Party, opposition to the dictatorship and the involvement in the 1974 Revolution, the polemics with the Catholic Church, or Portugal's entry into the European Union – Frier accounts for an extraordinary parallel between Saramago's 'untamed voice' (9), and the existence, in his novels, of a plurality of voices rising against different forms of oppression. 'Each of the major novels by Saramago is therefore an entry into a new world, as well as a re-exploration of an apparently familiar one, and the experience of exploring these worlds will alter our perceptions of ourselves, of Portuguese and universal history, and of what the world is like today. It is therefore a journey into the future as well as the past, a future rich in possibilities' (24). Saramago's novels are read taking into account the dichotomous nature of his writing intrinsically linked in a dialectical continuum (giving voice to the voiceless, retelling history from the loser's perspective) in a 'genuinely pluralist vision of modern society, including the nation of Portugal itself' (14).

The first chapter explores the novels of the 1980s, Levantado do Chão and Memorial do Convento, considered Saramago's core works in terms of ideological commitment and class-consciousness. If Memorial uncovers the social and economic relationships during the construction of the convent in Mafra, Levantado presents the parallel between a generation of a 'class of rural dictators-in-miniature' (42) and the family exploited by them. Frier's perspective is extremely original, for it opposes the family nucleus in both novels to the abuses of the powerful, underlining the importance of concepts such as community and history. Frier establishes several groups of opposing concepts, a core dichotomous reading that could be applied, one could suggest, to most of Saramago's novels: 'Power and powerlessness, extravagance and prudence, artificial and natural behaviour, static and dynamic characters, sterility and fertility, death and life' (32).

The second chapter is based on the contrast between the will to change the order of things and conformity to the status quo in História do Cerco de Lisboa, O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo and A Jangada de Pedra. Again, these are key texts in Saramago's career, but those that 'lead towards the writer's ideal of personal and political emancipation' (112). These books raise questions about authority (history and religion), always considering the possibility of escape and rebellion, which Frier's previous chapter cleverly left open. Frier discusses these books in...