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While typing up my brief review of One-Hundred Years of Solitude, i was reminded of this book, one of my favorites of all time, because like Gabriel García Márquez's book, this was beautifully written as well as an awe-inspiring translation effort.

For 15 years i was an editor of reference books. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that a professional proofreader protagonist/narrator immediately compelled me and held my attention. The idiosyncratically minimalist punctuation and the pages-long comma-spliced sentences were so unbelievably perfect for me as a reader (and for this story) that i couldn't put it down despite the difficulties they presented for comprehension. Saramago was forcing me to read more carefully than when i was attempting to consume the entire science fiction canon in the mid-1990s.

Finally (for the time being anyway) i never would've thought that i could find so much enjoyment in what reasonably could be considered "merely" a love story. But let's not forget Pride and Prejudice.