See Me, Feel Me

Senses work overtime in these two novels reviewed by Quentin Dunne

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Imagine, just for a moment, what would happen if you lost the ability to read these words, not because of impaired literacy, but because your very sense of sight vanished. Whatever hardships you imagined are likely to pale in comparison to the horrors experienced by the citizens of a sightless society in Jose Saramago’s allegorical and apocalyptic novel, BLINDNESS, in which an epidemic sweeps through an unnamed country, leaving its victims able to see nothing but a milky white.

Intriguingly and effectively, this outbreak of "white sickness" is never explained. One afternoon, a man is sitting in his car waiting for a traffic light to turn green. By the time it does, it’s irrelevant to the man, who’s now suddenly, mysteriously blind. Another man offers to drive him to the hospital, drops him off and steals his car, only to quickly become blind himself. The eye doctor who treats the man loses his own vision, of course, as do countless others. Curiously, the one person whose sight is spared is the doctor’s wife (which, like the epidemic itself, is thankfully never explained). When the government drags him off to a militarily enforced quarantine, she feigns her own blindness in order to join him.

Philosophically indebted to Albert Camus’s THE PLAGUE, Saramago’s work skillfully forces the reader to seriously ponder both the extreme human vice and virtue that such a catastrophe could easily unleash. As more people lose their sight, they also lose their morality, and the desperate struggle for survival results in robberies, rapes and murders over food. It’s not long before stray dogs are prowling the streets and feeding on corpses. But while the world at large descends into chaos and despair, a loose "family" of people, led by the blind doctor and his wife, manage their own journey with a quiet dignity, compassion and heroism that suggests humanity’s more appealing qualities might not only endure but prevail. "Might" is the operative word, however; as the full ramifications of the epidemic become inescapably, crushingly evident, civilization itself seems to be hanging on by a thread.

This is not, to put it mildly, light reading. What it is, though, is an exhilarating literary experience which works on multiple levels, including that of an adventure and a social commentary. Saramago so vividly paints both a picture of a disintegrating society and the faith and courage necessary to survive in it even (or especially) the most disturbing of passages retain a powerful pull.

Although certain stylistic elements--no formal character names and scant punctuation, for instance--might initially be a little confusing, this idiosyncratic approach ultimately makes the work more immediate, even urgent. You feel less as if you’re reading a book and more as if you’re witnessing events unfold.

So again, imagine for a moment what would happen if you lost the ability to read these words. Then be grateful you haven’t lost that ability; after all, amongst other things, you’ll need it to read BLINDNESS.

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TENDERNESS

Few figures were as pivotal in the transition of the young adult book from a marketing tool to a respected literary genre as Robert Cormier. Beginning with the 1974 publication of THE CHOCOLATE WAR, Cormier brought a darker, more psychologically textured approach to stories about teenagers, their struggles and the often confusing, possibly indifferent world around them. In subsequent books such as I AM THE CHEESE, WE ALL FALL DOWN and IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, he would continue to deftly explore the emotional terrain of adolescence with the honesty and integrity necessary to point out the awkward but inevitable truth that good guys don’t always finish first, and even when they do, the victory might well be Pyrrhic in nature. Of course, it helped that such truths were often wrapped in stories as suspenseful and entertaining as they were fatalistic.

By the time TENDERNESS was published in 1997, Cormier was 72 and just three years away from death. At this late stage of the game, his readers might have accepted he’d paid his dues, given him a pass and been grateful he was still writing at all. But even if that pass was there for the offering, Cormier had no interest in it, and with TENDERNESS, he wrote one of the most riveting works of his career.

Eighteen-year-old Eric Poole has just been released from juvenile detention for the killing of his mother and stepfather. After his arrest, he convinced people he had been pushed to the edge after years of physical abuse at their hands. Lieutenant Jake Proctor, the arresting officer at the time, however, not only didn’t buy Eric’s story but strongly suspected him of the unsolved murders of two teenage girls. Upon Eric’s release, Proctor vows to bring him to justice for what he is sure is the inevitable violence that will be unleashed. But someone else is fixated on Eric as well, an alienated 16-year-old named Lori Cranston, who had briefly befriended him years before at a time when she had desperately needed warmth and caring, when she had needed some… tenderness. She runs away from home in hopes of finding him and, perhaps, loving him. But is Eric indeed reformed? Will Lori’s belief in Eric prove tragic or redemptive? Will Proctor’s instincts allow him to serve a justice delayed or will he merely hurt innocent people in his quest for someone he’s (too?) sure is guilty? These questions and others play out under Cormier’s skillful hand, and, step by step, we become involved and invested in the characters’ increasingly desperate choices.

While the book is expertly written on a number of levels, perhaps the most impressive is Cormier’s empathic understanding of Lori, someone so longing for love she’s willing to risk her very life to find it. Once again, Cormier’s insight into the pain and uncertainty of adolescence makes for both a memorable character and an absorbing, ultimately heartbreaking reading experience.

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