One of our better discussions. Different writing style and subject matter. Great "what if" scenario.

It was a difficult book to read. Some of the events were quite shocking and may not have been necessary to get the point across.

This book is not for the squeemish. One member read the back cover and threw it down. Another club member couldn't get pass the lack of punctuation. Three members read the book in it entirety. Everyone had an opinion about the concept of "white blindness", the comparisons to genocide, the Holocaust, and how humans don't change and some do anything to survive. The characters are all remembered because they are described as the eye doctor, the girl with the dark glasses, the doctor's wife, etc. We have moved to a lighter read for next month but none of us will soon forget this story.

i was blown away not only by the subject matter but by the style of writing ... truly amazing

This book will give your group a lot to discuss, but it is not for the weak stomachs. Has some graphic descriptions of what happens when everyone in an area are blind -the filth, the crime....
Some of us liked it, some of us didn't. But we did all finish the book, which is saying something for it compared to some of the others that we have read or not finished reading...

I read this about 8 years ago and thought it would be a great book for discussion so I just reread it for my bookclub. We were all entralled. I see some comments about the lack of puctuation from other reviews; that is the author's style of writing and it truly adds to the chaos that is occuring. It's wonderful - it's in my top 5 favorite books.

The hard reality of life when desperation sets in!! You never know what you will or can do until you ABSOLUTELY have too! Not a book for everyone!

One of our best discussions ever. An eye-opening perspective that was both shocking and impossible to stop reading.

BLINDNESS could be the worst book I ever read. That is not because of the language used in the translation and not because of its storyline. Rather, it is just plain sloppy.

Using simple language, BLINDNESS describes a country dealing with a highly contagious epidemic in which people are going blind for an unknown reason. It’s a great premise and reminds me of the epidemic in Stephen King’s THE STAND.

But considering how difficult BLINDNESS is to read, I wonder how it won a Nobel Prize and THE STAND, a far more intricate and absorbing book, didn’t. It must have been a case of Portugal’s (where the author, José Saramago, is from) turn to win.

“Sloppy” describes the way Saramago presents BLINDNESS. Not only are paragraphs unnecessarily long, they are incorrectly long. They contain entire conversations between at least two people, no quotation marks, and haphazard punctuation (usually commas where periods should be).

BLINDNESS is, therefore, difficult to read. There is no indication of when someone stops talking and another person begins or when a character is thinking rather than talking out loud. Truly understanding this book requires rereading.

Not for everyone but ingenious writing and storytelling.