Reviews for El cuaderno (The Notebook)

The average rating for El cuaderno (The Notebook) based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-25 00:00:00 Cheese Cake When blogging comes to be considered a serious literary form, the blog José Saramago wrote regularly throughout 2008/2009 will surely be up there with the finest examples of the art. He began the blog in his eighty-sixth year after he'd recovered from a serious illness - he'd been officially pronounced dead the previous year - and so, naturally, the pieces he writes are pervaded with an awareness of death, his own or those of the many friends whose passing he mourns during the year or so he maintained the blog. And yet he underlines that he never feels so alive as whenever for one reason or other I have to talk about death… That sense of exuberance runs joyously through this collection of short pieces, gathered under the title 'The Notebook', and whether he's talking of such disparate subjects as the significance of divorce on the multiplication of book sales* or of his grandfather taking leave of his favourite trees hours before his death**, the phrasing is always impeccable. And behind every statement, no matter how serious, there lurks his unique sly humour; the reader feels that Saramago could slay the most ferocious dragons with his comic force alone. As he says, paraphrasing his compatriot, Eça de Queiroz, if we were to send a laugh around an institution, that institution would fall to pieces. That's definitely my kind of thinking and Saramago is most definitely my kind of person. I look forward to reading my next book of his, the aptly named Death at Intervals. ................................................ *When couples divorce, they sometimes split their libraries, forcing each to go on a book buying spree to replace the favourite books the other has insisted on taking. Saramago hopes his own books are sometimes among the favourites... **The full context of that reference - he wrote this piece after giving some interviews on the occasion of his eighty-sixth birthday in November 2008, a year and a half before his death in 2010: I'm told that the interviews were worth doing. I, as usual tend to doubt this, perhaps because I'm tired of listening to myself. What might seem new to other people has with the passing of time turned into a reheated soup for me. Or, worse still, I'm left with a bitter taste in my mouth due to the certainty that the handful of sensible things I've said in my life have turned out after all to be of absolutely no consequence. And why should they be of consequence? What significance does the buzzing of bees inside the hive have? Do they use it to communicate with one another? Or is it a simple effect of nature, merely a consequence of being alive, with no pre-existing consciousness or intent, like an apple tree bearing apples without any concern for whether anyone would come and eat them or not? And what about us? Do we talk for the same reason we perspire? Just because we do? Sweat evaporates, is washed away, disappears, sooner or later ends up in the clouds. And words? Where do they go? How many of them remain? And for how long? And what for, after all? I know these are idle words, appropriate for someone turning eighty-six. Or perhaps not so idle when I think of my grandfather Jerónimo, who in his final hours went to bid farewell to the trees he had planted, embracing them and weeping because he knew he wouldn't see them again. It's a lesson worth learning. So I embrace the words I have written, I wish them long life, and resume my writing where I left off. There can be no other response.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-29 00:00:00 Marlene Barratt Short passages of texts, opinions and thoughts that the author transcribed from his blog - the first volume of this collection. In this work, fragments are compiled, divided into several parts. Namely, the first of September 2008 until the last of March 2009. Similarly and lately, their Cadernos de Lanzarote was also born.