This book is a revelation. Imagine a context in which one could sit down and listen to the intimate ruminations of a much admired writer. Reading this book is like being invited to a private sphere where the author shares herself in the act of writing. One need not be acquainted with Lispector's work in order to get something out of this text. Cutting to the quick, her simple yet agile prose reveals a serious mind at work, a mind that works likes a pair of scissors to cut away the excess of life. What is left is the essential, which is also the inexpressible. Her short vignettes will leave one speechless, with the feeling that what she is writing is exactly what one was thinking.

I read this book, hoping for something eye opening and startlingly and amazingly overwhelming like The Stone Raft, but this book did not have that same ability to captivate. I cannot deny that The History of... is a well-crafted and, well, for lack of better diction, interesting book. It is. I read it with interest and sometimes amusement. The main character is charming, and you learn that his career as an editor has been long, distinguished and honorable (if indeed an editor can be called "honorable"). In his entire career he has never abused his position, but one day, as you will read, he does... and his liberty changes everything. Indeed Saramago raises interesting questions with this concept... when you change one single word, even the smallest of words, the entire meaning of everything can be changed. Saramago, naturally, delves more deeply into this subject in the book than I will here, but I think the book is worth reading simply for the merits of Saramago's verbal and philosophical meanderings.

If you can handle a reworking of the concept of 'punctuation' as we know it, Saramago's History of the Siege of Lisbon is well worth reading. It's not easy, by any stretch of the imagination: dialogue becomes a single block of text, single paragraphs go on for pages with no breaks and often without a period, and the whole concept of 'run-on sentence' is mostly ignored.

But it adds an incredible flow to this book. Based on a fairly simple premise--adding a single word to a history to change the entire course of the story--the book rises above plot, due in large part to the aforementioned style. Once you get used to it, the dialogue feels completely natural, not forced at all, and the sub-story of love between the proofreader and his editor falls into place perfectly. The characters are well developed to a fault, and by the end of the novel, you feel like you know them on a personal basis.

And it's got a two-page discussion of the beauty of toast. How can you not be fascinated? ("...it is so perfect and crunchy golden brown that one thinks one could go without the butter entirely, but you'd be a fool, only a fool would forego the butter...")

Overall, it took me a solid two weeks to finish this book, but it was worth my time: I completely understand why Saramago won the Nobel Prize.

When I started reading this book, all I knew about Saramago was that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature; so I did not know what to expect. Although the publisher compares him to Borges, Rushdie, and Garcia Marquez, what we have in the man from Portugal is a true native original.

We are introduced to the dusty world of a professional proofreader -- a fussy type who regrets having two gerunds in his name. I felt as if I were propelled into MOLLOY or some other of Beckett's novels as the beginning spiralled around this seemingly unlikely character.

Suddenly, everything changes. At a critical juncture in a history of the siege of Lisbon he is proofreading, Silva suddenly introduces a caret and adds the word "not" -- thus completely changing the history.

His new boss, a Dr Maria Sara is enchanted by this Bartleby-like act of negation. She challenges Silva to write a "what if" novel on the supposition that the history occurred as modified by the "not": that the Crusaders, instead of helping the King of Portugal defeat the Moors, actually sailed on to the Holy Land directly.

Meanwhile, Silva is clearly becoming enchanted with Maria Sara. What ensues is both the strangest and most convincing of love stories. Silva writes his book, brings us into the thick of the history as he imagines the various characters from the blind muezzin to the German knight to the king himself. All along, he and Maria are romancing each other through the events of the siege.

What an incredible ride! Saramago is a master at easing from one world into another and taking us with him. He is both a master story-teller and an authentic modern in his handling of a character's state of mind -- a writer who easily could hold his own in the company of the great writers of our time.

That book stinks. That is my Opinion. has nothing to do with the French Foreign Legion. I dumped it into the trash can already. Very disappointed.

Qué está haciendo aquí: ¿Tratando de interesarse por el libro? Pues entonces que espera ¡cómprelo! Se lo advierto, no se va a arrepentir. Recomiendo la quinta historia (es buenísima) END

Lispector applies her "stream of consciousness" style in an unusual two part writing. The two parts, stories and chronicles, offer observations on life within the unstable framework of her society.

The stories subjects are worked over by the raw cats tongue of power. From a simple invitation to lunch to a series of dreamlike cockroach executions we are drawn in and held captive and helpless.

The chronicles are observations "rescued from my bottom drawer" and called incomplete by themselves. However, as a group, these snapshots evoke a potent response. They blend together the best of this writers style in a format that strengthens the individual parts and gives back much more than you expect.

I was amazed that this book pulled such intense emotional responses from me. I needed to withdraw and carefully inspect each segment before going back. A strong book written without denouement or apology