I read Blindness by Jose Saramago a while ago, but I forgot to put it up here. This book really was an amazing read. I think everyone could get something out of it.
A man is at a stoplight in Portugal. (I think it's in Portugal, but I'm not absolutely positive. It's not necessary information anyways.) Out of nowhere, he loses his sight. It's not regular blindness, where everything seems to be black. It's eventually called "white sickness" or something like that, because everything is a milky white color, almost like you could see but there is such a thick fog over your eyes that it's *just* out of sight. So, after some confusion, a man helps him to his home. This same good Samaritan later steals his car.
There's a couple pages of the blind man feeling pathetic and knocking stuff over on accident. His wife arrives and they go to an optometrist, who doesn't have many answers for them since his condition is so unusual and his eyes are otherwise in perfect condition. I think by this time the blind man has been told many times that it was something spontaneous and his vision may return.
Well, the optometrist sees his other patients: a boy with a squinty eye (apparently squinty isn't a real word), a girl with something wrong that I forgot who has to wear dark glasses, and some older man. Later when he is home, he checks all of his books looking for anything he can find that might reveal what is wrong with the man's eyes. Then, I'm sure you guessed it: He goes blind. Instead of panicking, he goes to bed. The next day, he hears about some other spontaneous blindness happening to someone else. He lets someone know, I forgot who, that it might be contagious. Some stuff happens (not a lot) and the city starts rounding up the blind people and those they've with whom they've had contact.
So, knowing that they're coming for her husband, the optometrist's wife packs a bag for him and herself. Pretending to be blind (and believing that soon she will be), she is allowed to go along with her husband. They're taking to a sanitarium and left there to fend for themselves. The blind are in one wing and the soon-to-be-blind in another. Members of (the Portuguese?) military are placed outside the gates of the building to guard and daily feed the sanitarium. As you may have well guessed, the blindness spreads fairly quickly. All of the optometrist's patients soon arrive and the car thief and original blind man. Tensions mount as they're forced to live together, not being able to see each other, and not trusting each other. While all of this is going on, the optometrist's wife has still not lost her vision.
I'll leave off here. I think that's only the first 20-30 pages of the book and enough to hook most people. Reading the beginning of the book and the back cover and all that, I thought I knew exactly what was going to happen and wondering why I should even read it. I'm very happy I did, because I don't think anyone will be able to predict the path this book takes.
Of course, because it's a fairly popular book with a reasonable plot, it was made into a movie. (I don't in any way mean that completely ridiculous books aren't made into movies. You know which ones I'm talking about.) It stars Julianne Moore, Danny Glover, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal, and a few other good actors and actresses. I really do plan on watching it, though just by reading the wikipedia profile of the characters in the movie, I know it will have a different take on everything.A funny little piece of information about the book: the US-based organization called National Federation of the Blind strongly opposed the book's blindness=ignorance metaphor. At least, that's what I'm assuming they mean. Wikipedia said: "negatively portraying the blind". Kinda ridiculous.
There is a sequel to this book and I will definitely be reading that, along with whatever other books of his I come across.
