Rating: 
Summary: A book to be cherished
Review: 2 months I had never heard of Jose Saramago. Browsing through a local bookstore I was somewhat intrigued by the cover and title of the book, so I flip through it a bit, read the rave reviews on the back cover, and off I go with the book.
Now 2 months later I've breathed in all I could from its pages, and I'm off buying everything the man has ever written. The space on my shelf that had belonged to James Joyce and Franz Kafka, has been usurped by Jose Saramago who I now believe to be the superior writer of the three. This book has even effected the way I think. I have never been affected so much by a writer. I have always been an avid reader however only since reading this book has it dawned on me that I could be a writer as well. Enough about me. I do not need to rehash what other reviewers have done well. My intention in writing this review is to give my very enthusiastic recommendation of this book . Jose Saramago's writing is wonderfully inventive, imaginative, humorous, intelligent. and above all wise. He is a strong moral voice well worth listening to.
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Summary: El Poder Avasallador de la Globalización
Review: Cipriano Algor, un alfarero de 64 años de edad, se vería sumergido en una depresión increíble al enterarse que sus trabajos de alfarería no tendrían más cabida en el Centro porque la gente ya no los compra. El encargado le diría que la gente prefiere comprar implementos descartables cuya limpieza no les demande tiempo y que, además, sean baratos.
Cipriano regresa a casa donde vivía con su hija, Marta, y su yerno Marcial Gacho. No podía creer lo que acababa de escuchar, y cae sumido en la tristeza más profunda porque la profesión que había aprendido de sus antepasados había quedado obsoleta para el mundo moderno. No era sólo eso, las consecuencias serían peores ya que su único medio de ingreso era la producción de utensilios de mesa con arcilla ... ahora moriría de hambre.El centro simboliza para Saramago la Globalización que lo succiona todo y enriquece a los acaudalados y emprobrece aún más a los que ya no tienen que llevarse a la boca. La novela toma un nuevo rumbo cuando Marcial Gacho acepta una oferta de residir dentro del Centro y se lleva con él a Cipriano y a su esposa. Una vez tomado posición se le encomienda a Marcial la temeraria tarea de vigilar un extraño hallazgo encontrado durante las excavaciones realizadas durante la construcción del Centro. El desenlace sería más que inesperado al darse cuenta que aquel hallazgo les indicaría que ellos también estaban siendo succionados por el Centro (la Globalización). Es por eso que deciden huir a un lugar alejado de la modernidad y en donde podrían ser libres. Saramago muestra su ya conocida oposición a la política actual y sobre todo a la Globalización que a veces parece ir absorviendo de a pocos a los países más pequeños so pretexto de proporcionarles tecnología. La pregunta es si a estos países pequeños les será posible huir de la fuerza avasalladora de las grandes potencias o es que en realidad están obligadas a seguir subyugados bajo el chantaje que les imponen el poder económico y militar?.
Rating: 
Summary: too many words, too little story
Review: Disappointing. This book is extremely tedious. The narrative, just like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is comprised of long sentences, with many commas and no paragraphs. However, unlike Marquez, this book seems to stretch into a 300 page novel a story that could be written as a 10 page short story. I would venture to guess that no less than 50 pages are dedicated to describe the dog's thoughts...
Rating: 
Summary: OK, but not Saramago's best
Review: I had the honor of meeting José Saramago at a book-signing in Lisbon's Chiado district shortly after he won the Nobel Prize in 1998. At the time, I wondered if receiving the prize would cause one of my favorite novelists to sit back and write nothing worthy of note, or nothing at all. Fortunately, "The Cave" bears the earmarks of earnestness, diligence, and love of the Portuguese language that characterize Saramago's earlier works. But as a novel it's disappointing. The central theme of "The Cave" is that a giant, impersonal, and arrogantly managed shopping center, the octopean Centro, is extending its tentacles and squeezing the commercial life out of the region. The main character, Cipriano Algor, an artisan potter living in a rural hamlet and eking out a living selling dishes to the Centro, is one of the shopping complex's victims. The Centro treats its suppliers ruthlessly: work with us on one-sided terms or we'll dispense with you. And we'll dispense with you anyway when you're no longer useful to us. Disastrous for Algor, the Centro no longer wants to sell his stoneware; its customers prefer cheaper and less breakable plastic tableware. Thus, much of the novel consists of the petty indignities the nasty Centro visits on the desperate and humiliated Algor, a situation complicated by the fact that Marçal Gacho, Algor's live-in son-in-law, is a security guard for the shopping center and wants to move there with his wife Marta. (The Centro contains an apartment complex.) For all these facts, the plot is thin, and it's stifled by overlong narratives, asides, and commentaries that dominate the novel. "The Cave" is like an opera with much singing and little action. Indeed, few dramatic events disturb the novel's languor until the final 35 or so pages of the 350-page-long Portuguese version. And there's little that's compelling about Cipriano Algor, Marçal Gacho, Marta, or the family dog, Achado (Found). They're all without depth. Algor is a stiff, diffident and lonely widower whose inability to act on his interest in Isaura, the widow across town, exasperates the reader. Oddly, Saramago relies heavily on the family dog for character development, extolling Achado's virtues. But this peculiar device does not succeed. In the end, Achado's ordinary canine behavior fails to inspire interest in itself or to illuminate its owners' personalities. And incongruously for such uneducated people, the characters often speak the King's Portuguese. (As alluded to, I read the book in Portuguese and that criticism may not apply to Margaret Jull Costa's English translation.) "The Cave" contains a number of trite and cranky commentaries. They stand in unfortunate contrast to the acute sketches of human behavior and universal dilemmas that enliven other Saramago novels. Algor, his family, and his dog are portrayed as the salt of the earth, rather like the Joads in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." The conflict between Algor and the arrogant Centro is an allegory for Saramago's dislike of globalization and the liberalization of the world economy--a dislike he made clear in 1998, when he argued, "Injustices multiply, inequalities become worse, ignorance grows, misery spreads. The same schizophrenic humanity able to send instruments to [Mars] to study the composition of its rocks witnesses indifferently the deaths of millions from hunger. . . . Governments fail to do [their duty], because they don't know how to, because they can't, or because they don't want to. Or because those who effectively govern the world don't let them: the multinational and intercontinental corporations whose power, absolutely undemocratic, has reduced almost to nothing what once remained of the ideal of democracy." In sum, Saramago stands with the antiglobalization protestors who generated datelines from Seattle, Quebec City, and Genoa. His worldview may stem from the degrading poverty and oppression his grandparents experienced in rural Portugal (see his Nobel Prize acceptance speech). Yet if Saramago were less rigid, "The Cave" might acknowledge that the same liberalization that created the Centro permits Algor to leave behind its nouveau-riche customers and haughty management. He could sell instead to visitors to Portugal who want to buy handmade stoneware, or over the Internet to collectors in Montreal, Adelaide, and Sapporo. Algor, then, is simply trying to sell in the wrong place, and if the Centro rebuffs him it points more to flaws in the Centro's marketing strategy than to the intrinsic cruelty "The Cave" suggests. Why should the Centro waste shelf space on relatively unprofitable merchandise? Moreover, Saramago's portrayal of the Centro is unrealistic and shows a lack of awareness of the impermanence of economic hegemony. Even well-run companies face reversals. In today's financial news (November 8, 2002), McDonald's is reported to be withdrawing from three countries entirely and closing about 175 restaurants in 10 more. Saramago presents the Centro as omnipotent and timeless. But its bad relations with its suppliers would probably doom it in reality. It's worth noting that Portugal, like Ireland, has been a European economic success story. Accompanying its economic growth, new shopping centers like Lisbon's Amoreiras and Columbo malls have emerged. They have been very popular, and have coincided with a decline in some traditional business districts. Yet those who know Portugal may agree that the country hardly seems economically, socially or culturally the worse for these changes, Saramago's implicit lament notwithstanding. My recommendation: if you're a Saramago fan, you may enjoy "The Cave." But if you're new to him, start by reading one of his better novels, like "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis," "Blindness," or "All the Names."
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Summary: Disappointing
Review: I know, those who love Saramago unconditionally will be upset at this assessment, but this book could easily have been a short story or novella and got the same points across while being more to the point and powerful. I guess coming straight off Blindness, which, to me, is one of the best books ever written, this one just came up short (or long, actually). Also, and everyone has commented on this aspect of the book, but glowingly, the comment on modern capitalism and the contrast between the center and the potter are making points so OBVIOUS that they almost make no point at all. Capitalism bad. Little guy good. It's that simple. I think he could've been a little more subtle. I will say, I loved the character development and the idea of the "Center" (although, like I said, it's significance was painfully overt). What I didn't like was the ending, because I think it was cryptic for its own sake and didn't make the rest of the story add up.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious
Review: I recommend reading a couple of chapters before buying it. I read a few pages and found it quaint---Two thirds of the way through it remained quaint but never hit on 'entertaining'. However, if you're having trouble getting to sleep...
Rating: 
Summary: Does Brooklyn need, or want, a Center?
Review: I would give "The Cave" 5 stars were it not for the exceedingly complicated writing style. This is the first Saramago I have read and, aside from the (to me) unnecessarily difficult style, I thought it was brilliant, for all the reasons so eloquently expressed by other reviewers. I loved the characters and the way Saramago put us inside their thoughtful, humorous, and very human minds. My only contribution is to bring readers' attention to parallels with the arena complex proposed this week for Brooklyn. It happened that I was reading "The Cave" as the media told us about how "eminent domain" will be used to deprive people of their homes and businesses so that private developers can build a huge, artificial, and tax-exempt commercial enterprise! Is anyone else reminded of the Center?
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Summary: Metaphoric Microcosm
Review: In "The Cave" Saramago creates a miniature reality, as a metaphor for everyday life. He shows the constant strain of classical methods versus Modern creations in the constant tug and pull of the artist and the Metropolis. The Purchasing Department of the metropolis holds the artist's fate in its hands as it decides what to buy and how to deal with the artist/vendor. Not leaving it just there, the diametrically opposed views of life that are imposed in the metropolis versus in the pottery of the artist are most telling and indicative of society today. In the metropolis, people have traded personal privacy, freedom and liberty to one degree or another, for safety and security. While they are safe and secure, their whereabouts and their activities are always visible to the metropolis. But they are safe. So they trade their freedoms for this police state environment. It is this analysis, the benefits versus the detriments of the metropolis versus the artist's life, that Saramago examines in this book. The choices the characters make illustrate the author's preferences and also his concerns. This book is a tremendously incisive look at the people and the rules. For those interested in how we might live, this book is a must read. While not as graphic and poignant as Saramago's Nobel Prize winner, "Blindness" it still gives one just as much to ponder about our future and our choices. With excellent writing style and true emotionality of expression, this book is a truly fine piece of modern literature.
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Summary: "What nightmare is this"?
Review: In Book VII of his REPUBLIC, Plato observes in his allegory of the cave that the strangers imprisoned there "are just like us." This is also the central theme of Portugese writer, Jose Saramago's new, allegorical novel. Cipriano Algor is an aging potter who lives with his daughter, Marta, his son-in-law, Marcal, and a "very conscientious, sensitive . . . almost human" (p. 307) dog named Found outside The Center, an imposing complex of arcades, shops, staircases, escalators, cafes, terraces, movie theaters, discotheques, big-screen tvs, electronic games, billboards, mannequins, a church, a casino, a gymnasium, a roller coaster, and a zoo (p. 241). Marcal works there as a security guard, and Cipriano sells his earthenware pots and jugs there until he is told that they are "worthless." People prefer plastic. Cipriano decides to make ceramic dolls instead. In his novel, Saramago's frequent allusions to Plato's cave transition from metaphorical to literal. After Marcal receives a promotion, Cipriano moves to The Center with his daughter and her husband, leaving Found behind. Cipriano soon discovers that, in The Center, residents actually prefer windows with a view of The Center itself, finding that view "much more pleasant" (p. 238). Some people, he learns, "never see the light of day" (p. 241). During excavation, Plato's cave is literally unearthed beneath The Center, containing six bodies imprisoned there with ropes, and "as if a metal spike had been put through their skulls to keep them fixed to the stone" (p. 292). When Plato's cave becomes a tourist attraction, Cipriano and his family leave The Center to "start a new life a long way from here" (p. 305). Readers familiar with Plato's allegory of the cave will perhaps appreciate Saramago's novel most, although other readers who think there's more to existence than big city life and shopping malls will surely enjoy exploring this CAVE. G. Merritt
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Summary: A retelling of Plato¿s Allegory of the Cave and a warning.
Review: In this metaphysical and surrealistic novel, Saramago transforms Plato's Allegory of the Cave into a contemporary novel about Cipriano Algor, a man in his sixties who lives in a small village, where he practices his trade as a potter. Living in tune with nature as he digs clay from the earth, works it with his hands, and fires it in an old, family-owned kiln, Cipriano suddenly finds himself without a livelihood when a mysterious and all-powerful Center rejects his real pottery in favor of longer-lasting plastic. And when Cipriano's real life in his small village is also sacrificed for a totally controlled life in an apartment in the Center, Saramago vividly illustrates how the shadows of artificial things are often mistaken for reality in contemporary society, which does not favor "inquisitive ones," searching for life's essence. Despite the novel's allegorical structure and didactic message, Saramago creates warm characters who inspire the belief that the good, kind, and sensitive souls of the world can survive, and perhaps triumph on some level. Love and family matter here, despite Cipriano's belief that he is "merely the largest of the bits of clay [in the yard], a small dry clod that will crumble with the slightest pressure." Though he is a molder of clay, he recognizes that there are also forces being exerted on him. Filled with meditations on literature, reading, the creative process, experimentation, and individuality, the novel is both intellectually exciting and very challenging. Unfortunately, Saramago's style is more daunting than his message. Omitting all quotation marks, question marks, and the conventions of paragraphing and sentence structure, he challenges the reader to distill the reality of his message from the shadows of his style. Dialogue involving three characters, internal comments on the dialogue by the author, shifts in point of view (even including the dog's view, on occasion), in addition to the on-going developing action, often take place within a single, page-long sentence. Page after page of unbroken, gray type give the reader little "breathing room" and often require rereading, a process reminiscent of Cipriano's working in his pottery and reworking his clay to get it right. Readers considering this book will want to take the time to look up Plato's Allegory of the Cave (many copies of which are available on-line) in order to appreciate its intricacies fully. Mary Whipple
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