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All the Names
All the Names | José Saramago
18 posts | 17 read | 15 to read
Senhor José is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily routine. But one day, when he comes across the records of an anonymous young woman, something happens to him. Obsessed, Senhor José sets off to follow the thread that may lead him to the woman–but as he gets closer, he discovers more about her, and about himself, than he would ever have wished. The loneliness of people's lives, the effects of chance, the discovery of love–all coalesce in this extraordinary novel that displays the power and art of José Saramago in brilliant form.
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TieDyeDude
All the Names | José Saramago
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lauraisntwilder 💙 Beartown 5mo
43 likes1 comment
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TieDyeDude
All the Names | José Saramago
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My November #bookspin @TheAromaofBooks
#bookspin All the Names by Jose Saramago
#doublebookspin Being Heumann by Judith Heumann

TheAromaofBooks Woohoo!!! Enjoy!!! 5mo
34 likes1 comment
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Liz_M
All the Names | José Saramago
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Thanks for the tag, @BarbaraBB, and @alwaysbeenaloverofbooks for the meme! I don't give 5 🌟 ratings lightly, but here are a few of my #favs by European authors (in honor of Readingeurope2020)

🇵🇹 All the Names by Jose Saramago
🇫🇷 Jealosy by Alain Robbe-Grillet
🇨🇭 On Love by Alain de Botton

Id like to see @Billypar and @emilyhaldi list their favorites!

Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks Thank you for playing â¤ï¸ðŸ“š 4y
Billypar Thanks for the tag- always a fun question to consider. I haven't read any of these, but I have wanted to try another of Saramago's after Balthasar and Blimunda: this one sounds good! 4y
vivastory I don't think I've heard of that Saramago before. I'm intrigued! 4y
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vivastory @Billypar Haven't read Blindness? I think you'd like that one...🤔 4y
Billypar @vivastory I haven't but I really want to: it's been on my list for some time. 4y
Liz_M @vivastory, @Billypar All the Names is a distant descendent of the detective novel and it interrogates self-identity and what makes individuals themselves . It was my first Saramago and I love it! 4y
BarbaraBB So cool you chose three European writers. I‘ve read and enjoyed two of these â¤ï¸ 4y
vivastory Well, I'm definitely sold! Adding to TBR. 4y
11 likes1 stack add8 comments
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Liz_M
All the Names | José Saramago
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Essential Calvin & Hobbes, The
Lolita
I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Zorro
All the Names
Brothers Karamazov, The
East of Eden
Things They Carried, The
Hours, The

The #NameChallenge (especially for my long name of Elizabeth) looked rather fun, so I tagged myself!

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Bookwomble
All the Names (Revised) | José Saramago
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Pickpick

I loved the atmosphere of Saramago's world: close, dark, hot and oppressive, and by turns cold, damp, dusty and lonely. He tells of the search for personal connection in an increasingly alienating world, of a breaking through of the self from an imposed and accepted conformity. If the liberation found by protagonist Sehnor José is a small one, it is nonetheless transformative. 5/5🌟

Bookwomble Oddly, the day before reading the passage of Sehnor José's search in the cemetery, I was engaged in a not dissimilar search myself for my grandmother's grave. One of us was definitely unsuccessful, the other leaving with more ambiguous results. 5y
saresmoore Wonderful review! I like the connection with your own visit to the cemetery. 5y
Bookwomble @saresmoore Mmm, it was a bit weird to read, but makes perfect sense narrative (both in the book and irl). 5y
16 likes1 stack add3 comments
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Bookwomble
All the Names (Revised) | José Saramago
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“Memory, which is very sensitive and hates to be found lacking, tends to fill in any gaps with its own spurious creations of reality, but more or less in line with the facts of which it has only a vague recollection, like what remains after the passing of a shadow.â€

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Bookwomble
All the Names (Revised) | José Saramago
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“Old photographs are very deceiving, they give us the illusion that we are alive in them, and it's not true, the person we are looking at no longer exists, and if that person could see us, he or she would not recognise him or herself in us, 'Who's that looking at me so sadly,' he or she would say.â€

Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks 💔💔 5y
15 likes1 comment
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Bookwomble
All the Names (Revised) | José Saramago
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“Carrying a photograph of someone in your pocket is like carrying a little bit of their soul.â€

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Bookwomble
All the Names (Revised) | José Saramago
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I'm trying to find my nana's name amongst all those laid to rest here. It feels like a small churchyard, but it's bigger when you're looking for one stone amongst so many.

ljuliel Wow, that looks like a really old church and cemetery ! Any ida how old the building is ? 5y
Bookwomble @ljuliel It's St. Cuthbert's Church in Southport. The present building dates to 1739, and the oldest grave stone in the cemetery dates to 1577, but there's records of a church here back to the 12th century. The dedication to St. Cuthbert arises from the tradition that the site was one of the resting places of his body when it was moved from Holy Island in Northumberland to protect it from Viking raids in the 9th century. 5y
ljuliel Isn‘t that something ? You‘re so very lucky to be able to visit places that have such history ! It looks like such an interesting place to visit. 5y
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Bookwomble @ljuliel It's a church close to the place I grew up, so I guess I rather take it for granted. As kids, we made up stories about the grave stones - one for a lady of the manor from the early 19th century (the local aristocrats go back to Domesday), we decided was a White Lady who haunted the village green 👻; another of a sea captain who drowned in the 18th century had a skull and crossbones on it, so we decided he must have been a pirate! ☠ 5y
ljuliel Sounds so cool. I love walking through graveyards. We don‘t have any that old here. Our oldest grave in town is from someone who fought in the Revolutionary War. I think the graves with the skull and crossbones meant possibly a bad person or someone who wasn‘t a church member ? I‘m not sure. I‘ve heard several meanings of that. A pirate sounds as good as anything to me. ðŸ´â€â˜ ï¸ 5y
Bookwomble @ljuliel The s&b is a common motif on headstones of a certain period and is just a momento mori, but children's imaginations will invent 😊 5y
18 likes6 comments
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Bookwomble
All the Names (Revised) | José Saramago
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"- It's only because we live so sunk in ourselves that we don't notice that what is actually happening to us leaves intact, at every moment, what might happen to us
- Does that mean that what might happen is being constantly regenerated
- It's not only being regenerated, it's multiplying, you just have to compare the events of two consecutive days
- I never thought of it like that
- These are things known only to the angst-ridden."

Bookwomble Anxiety as the acute awareness of the manifold possibilities and consequences inherent in each moment, each decision. 5y
saresmoore If that isn‘t an accurate description of anxiety, I don‘t know what is. Even more intrigued by this book... 5y
Bookwomble @saresmoore I thought so, too. He seems to suggest that this trait can be a positive one, too, though I guess that depends on not feeling swamped or overwhelmed by possibilities. 5y
19 likes3 comments
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Bookwomble
All the Names (Revised) | José Saramago
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I'm drawn to Saramago's authorial voice, the way he speaks directly to me as both a reader and an observer/participant in the story: "... therefore let us provisionally suspend judgement until other events, more enlightening, in both the good and the bad senses, draw us a definitive portrait." The 'us' made me smile, and put me in mind of Marc Bolan's lyrics to 'Spaceball Ricochet": ??

Bookwomble ?Book after book
I get hooked
Everytime the writer
Talks to me like a friend?
Then, two pages further on, the MC is trying to win over a reluctant informant, and: "'You'd better come in, they'll probably be listening to us from behind the door over there.' Given the implicit alliance that the personal pronoun 'us' seemed to represent, Senhor José realised that he had won that round." ??
5y
Bookwomble Saramago only goes and tells me *exactly* what I'd been thinking and feeling! Spooky and Genius! 5y
17 likes2 comments
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Bookwomble
All the Names (Revised) | José Saramago
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"- So you don't believe me
- No
- Why, if you don't mind my asking
- Because what you say doesn't fit with my reality and what doesn't fit with my reality doesn't exist"

This seems true on several levels ?

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Bookwomble
All the Names (Revised) | José Saramago
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You know, there are some books you read and think, "Oh, *this* is good," and then there are the books you read and think, "Oh! This is *gooood*!"
I'm only on page 25, practically nothing has happened, and I'm already in love with Saramago's prose (honourable mention to Costa as the translator). Reminiscent of Borges and Kafka, with a bit of Mervyn Peake thrown in for good measure. Fingers crossed that the next 200-odd pages are as good ???

saresmoore Ooh, I‘m intrigued! 5y
Bookwomble @saresmoore I can easily imagine someone reading the same few pages and thinking, "What? ?", but if you like any of the authors I mentioned above, I think you'd likely go, "Ahh ☺". Early in the journey for me, but promising all the same ? 5y
TieDyeDude I reread "Blindness" immediately after finishing it the first time, and read it at least once more since. I have several other books of his, but I haven't made time to read them, though I know I need to... 5y
Bookwomble @TieDyeDude I'm pretty sure I'll be on the lookout for more of his books. I guess he's not a Nobel Laureate for nothing 😠5y
23 likes1 stack add4 comments
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Bookwomble
All the Names (Revised) | José Saramago
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“The distribution of tasks amongst the various employees follows a simple rule, which is that the duty of the members of each category is to do as much work as they possibly can, so that only a small part of that work need be passed to the category above. This means the clerks are obliged to work without cease from morning to night, whereas senior clerks do so only now and then, the deputies very rarely, and the Registrar almost never.â€

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Bookwomble
All the Names (Revised) | José Saramago
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I've only read Saramago's memoir of childhood before, so this is my first foray into his fiction (unintended alliteration!), and I'm looking forward to it. The story involves a city registry archivist who (mis)uses his access to personal information to compile dossiers on celebrities. When he is struck by the details of an 'ordinary' dead woman, he decides to track her down, which sounds creepy, but I'm hoping it turns out otherwise.

arubabookwoman My favorite Saramago (of the several I've read) is The Double. Haven't read All the Names yet, but it's waiting patiently on my shelf. 5y
monalyisha I love the cover design! 5y
Bookwomble @monalyisha Me, too 😊 5y
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Bookwomble @arubabookwoman I'm loving it so far - you should get impatient with it, I think 😠5y
arubabookwoman I think his prose style is very similar in most of his fiction-at least in the ones I have read. His sentences wind around, you don't think you're going anywhere, and then suddenly you're somewhere entirely unexpected. I love his writing. 5y
Bookwomble @arubabookwoman Exactly! I re-read a paragraph to follow the flow of point of view, which smoothly shifted from omniscient narrator to imagined conversation between a notional interlocutor and the MC, to MC's now actual internal dialogue with the notional interlocutor, which is now an aspect of himself, then back to the omniscient narrator taking to the reader! Fantastic! 5y
15 likes1 stack add6 comments
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Liz_M
All the Names | José Saramago
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Because I am an overachiever, I am using my full name ;-)

E - East of Eden
L - Lolita
I - I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Z - Zorro
A - All the Names
B - Brothers Karamazov, The
E - Essential Calvin and Hobbes, The
T - The Things They Carried
H - Hours, The

#booknames @ScorpioBookDreams

BarbaraBB I wish my name would start with EL 😠6y
BarbaraBB I had never even heard of All the Names. I often find Saramago very difficult though I loved Blindness. Is this your favourite? 6y
Liz_M @BarbaraBB I haven't read much Saramago, but I loved this one! It's sort of a mystery, but deals with the themes of identity -- how much is intrinsic and how much a construct of society. 6y
16 likes3 comments
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GoneFishing
All the Names | José Saramago

Don't be afraid, the darkness you're in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body, they are two darknesses separated by a skin, I bet you've never thought of that, you carry a darkness about with you all the time and that doesn't frighten you...my dear chap, you have to learn to live with the darkness outside just as you learned to live with the darkness inside

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LDavisMunro
All the Names | José Saramago
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This week I am returning to one of my all time favourite authors, #josesaramago. I haven't read this book of his before, but I am a huge fan so far, and of all his work. #discoveringwritinglife #greatbooks #writinginspiration